Kajetan Kovič


Kajetan Kovič was a Slovene poet, writer, translator, and journalist.

Life

Kovič was born in Maribor in 1931 and spent his childhood in the small town of Poljčane and Hrastje–Mota near Radenci in eastern Slovenia. He graduated from high school in Maribor and received a bachelor's degree in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana in 1956. He died on 7 November 2014.

Career

Kovič started writing poetry in high school, and he published his first poetry in 1948. He was best known for his poems and he wrote several bestselling children's books. Kovič also wrote political poetry, such as a poem in honor of Josip Broz Tito. He established himself as a translator of German, French, Czech, Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, and Russian poetry into Slovene. He also translated the poems that France Prešeren wrote in German into Slovene.

Awards and recognition

Kovič won the Prešeren Foundation Award in 1967 for his poetry collection Ogenjvoda and the Grand Prešeren Award in 1978 for his poetry collection Labrador. In 1995 he was made a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Poetry collections