Martin Solotruk (b. 1970) after studying various subjects ranging from physics, programming, to art history and translation studies in different places including Azusa Pacific University, California, and Warwick University, Great Britain, he graduated in English and American studies and in Slovak literature at Comenius University, Bratislava, where he lectured for over two decades.  Solotruk’s first book of poetry Silent Wars (1997) won the Slovak Literary Fund Best Debut Award. It was followed by Grinding (2001), Plankton of Gravity (2006), Lovestory: Agent and Patient (2007) and The Metaphysical Household (2017). 

His poems appeared in major anthologies in Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, China, Taiwan, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the US, his entire poetry books were also published in Spanish, Italian, German, Hindi, and French.  Solotruk was invited to read at many leading festivals, including Printemps de Poetes in Paris, Poesie Festival Berlin, and many more, e.g. London, Cracow, Dublin, New Delhi, St. Andrews, Taipei, San Salvador, and elsewhere. His award winning translation interests include namely Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, Ted Hughes, as well as drama done for major stages in Slovakia, including the National Theatre.

Frowning in Half-life

You say I’m always frowning,

But in my mind

I’m only running about

amidst everything that I’ve been watching.

I’m running away from it

like a runner on air

before clouds that are coming together.

I’d love

to convince you

that I’m not frowning

— surely not when making love.

It’s beginning to upset me.

I’m frowning because I can’t

get rid of the feeling

that sometimes we flow so rapidly

that we come to nothing more than a secret

commercial of ourselves.

Visible only in every

fraction of time smaller

than our brain could ever imagine.

That we’re flowing so rapidly

we can feel our half-life.

And all we want is to concentrate

and stay concentrated.

Make love and listen to the washing machine,

to its endless program,

the rhythm of vitality

of the simplest things,

which sometimes comes knocking at our head,

eureka

— iconoclasm of frowning

against solar frowns,

protuberances of atomic pairs,

protuberances of nuclear families,

a huge sturdy NO of the robustness

of ordinary reality.

It’s the breath of free ions

that breezes from the frowning.

That’s what’s creating the architecture

of these protuberances,

the protuberances of a dark body

which is so intently getting rid of the dirt of doubts

with the final strain on the lightness

of breath and a petty grumble

uncertain what to do with the free radicals,

with minimal risk of implosion.

I’m peeling off

my frowning.

The frowning of permeable skin.

I’m moving

from the old one into a new.

It’s the frowning I come rising from.

From frowning under which it’s bright.

That’s what transports me

making me ever subtler.

I’m frowning as if in a column of dust,

which (you’re the one knows this best)

we’ll never disperse completely.

I’m not leaving in it, here I just,

sometimes timidly, yet

ceaselessly

land in your eyes

or behind your back

I land here

and I stay with you.

Tell me now, am I still frowning?