Connection

For me it was a surprise to discover that Milorad was one of those special people. I don't meet them too often in my life. People whose presence has the power to take me into a different zone. I found this especially after he became ill. Sometimes speaking slowly about small things he seemed to be helping me reach a deeper connection with the world and with myself. And strangely, I felt he knew he was doing this.

I remember driving him back to Harborne one night. Before we set off, he put on a coat and pulled on a cap. Glancing at him in the car, I saw the cap had changed his appearance. He seemed experienced in struggle and quietly sure of the value of comradeship. The streets were also altered. Darker and more poetic - reminding me of how I had sometimes felt in the past, walking at night in Belgrade.

Do videnja - he said to me, at the end of the journey.
- Nick

The importance of a page

Walking in October sun
I see ...

a no-name house;
its shutters barred,
the veranda empty,

no one picks
the figs to spread
on bread for tea,

underneath the fir tree
no one sits to write
or listen to the sea,

there are no stories of the sea,
there is no tide
no ebb or flow for me.

Yet ...

tethered to the quay
is a nutshell boat
and a man nearby,

'rather small for you'
I joke, glad to have
some company on the way,

'when all is said and done
I can make myself to be
any shape in poetry'

he laughs, and tears
a page out from his book
which like a leaf takes flight,

cartwheels over water,
as if it wants to be
out of sight before the ink
has dried.

'Why do you write?'
I ask and look away
to watch more pages para glide
across the bay.

'My thoughts leave home,
it is my autumn' I hear
him say-or has he heard me?

I do not know
so turn my head,
but man and boat have disappeared.



For Misho who understood the absence of things.

What's Your Memory of Milorad?

Photo by John Dolan

We all have our own memories of Misho - friend, poet, teacher, colleague. Why not share one of your memories with us?

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I first met Misho in September '99 at the MAC. Martin introduced us. We were all there to see a film, Midsummer Night's Dream with Kevin Cline (not a great movie as it turned out). We had a coffee together and Misho offered me a poem to read, as he often did when meeting new people. The poem moved me so deeply I couldn't respond. 'Now let the expert comment,' said Misho rather archly I felt, taking the poem from me and handing it to Martin. But for me, the world had already changed. Utterly, you might say. I started writing after that and poetry (not just the writing - the way of perceiving the world) was the foundation, the bed-rock of our mutual understanding and friendship. The poem? 'Solo'. [I'll find a copy and add it]

Seagulls, by David Hart

David writes that his poem Seagulls appears in the current edition of Modern Poetry in Translation and the following is his note which appears in that edition:
"Milorad Krystanovich came to Birmingham from Croatia in 1992, from the upheaval in that part of Europe, and after a few years made the transition from making poems in Croatian to writing and publishing in English. His latest is Improvising Memory (Nine Arches Press 2010). In recent years he has been in less than good health, and as a gift I had the idea of a poem of a meeting of gulls from his birthplace and from my own. The words were put into Welsh by someone I was at school with, Helen Wallis, for which thank you; the Croatian is by Milorad, and I am grateful to his close friends Cathy Perry and Martin Underwood for enabling the process."
To read the poem, go to the Poems page on this site.

Posted on behalf of David Hart
http://davidhartbirminghampoet.blogspot.com/

... the nicest man I've ever met

You were always such a kind and gentle man, very courteous and polite, the nicest man I've ever met. I never heard you say a bad word about anyone. You coped remarkably well with a hard life and your illness without giving way to bitterness or self-pity and still kept your concern for others. I'm glad I knew you. You were someone of whom it could truly be said that to know you was to love you.

Posted on behalf of Becky

Making Waves

As we move through life we leave a wake. Some of us make waves but Misho’s wake spread wider and wider because he had a great capacity to make friends – friends who stayed in contact. His special capacity was to introduce friends to other friends with the result that many benefited. Cathy and I have many friends today both here and in Croatia which we would never have met without Misho’s wake crossing and re-crossing others in all directions. During his last illness these friends became a great support, strength and encouragement not only to Misho but also to Cathy (in particular) and myself and also many for each other.
When Cathy and I were in Croatia on holiday a few years ago we were up early one bright clear morning and went down to the seafront. The sea was an absolute mirror of blue, not a ripple. Then one little fishing boat came chugging round the point and across the view its wake came to us , disturbing the water for the first time that day and it also widened out to reach the further shore a mile away and then rebounded and interwove , it was clear to see, with more waves from the wake coming in again. Often we don’t see this in life but in Misho’s case it is clearer. He boat has carried on round the further point but the friendships and influences will go on bobbing up and down and to and fro nudging each other and disturbing the gulls, rocking memories, setting off other interactions, as all good poems and writings do to those who read them again and again.

So many memories

This is my favourite photo of Misho. It was taken in 2003, during his first return to Vodice. We took a boat trip with his father. Misho often seemed to be looking for something on the horizon, especially that magical place where the sea meets the sky.