“With his second book, Michal Tallo proves that he is one of the most most outstanding voices of our contemporary poetry.”
- Derek Rebro, Vlna Magazine
"A story of love written accurately and beautifully along with an equally enchanting book design: Michal Tallo’s second poetry collection proved his talent and the courage to live his own life."
- Mila Haugová, Pravda Newspaper
“Tallo’s Antimita doesn’t suffer from the unstableness typical for debuts or any other expectable weaknesses of a first book; on the contrary, I would (in)cautiously say that it is one of the most impressive phenomenons of our poetry at the moment.”
-Matúš Mikšík, Knižná revue / The Book Revue
Michal Tallo (1993) is a poet, writer and translator. He is the author of three books of poetry - Antimita (Antimacy, 2016), Δ (Delta, 2018) and Kniha tmy (The Book of Darkness, 2022). His poems have been translated into several languages and published in various foreign anthologies and magazines; the Ukrainian translation of Antimita was released in 2018 by Krok publishing house (Антимність; translated by Oleksandra Kovalchuk). He regularly publishes poetry, prose, reviews, essays and translations of contemporary poetry from English in various Slovak and Czech magazines. He is the coordinator of Básne SK/CZ poetry prize and is the chief editor of Lentikular - a poetry imprint of Brak publishing house. In 2020, Tallo was nominated for the international Václav Burian Poetry Prize. His most recent work is a translation of two collections by the acclaimed British poet Andrew McMillan - Physical and Playtime - published as a single volume by the Literárna bašta publishing house as Telo / Čas hier in July 2022. Everything’s Fine, Love Is Everywhere, Tallo's short story collection, is due in Summer 2024.
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Poems from Antimita (Antimacy)
translated by John Minahane
b.
eventually you’ll meet him anyhow, walking the opposite way through his town,
you’re hurrying to the station, off, back home, after six days
of unannounced stay, you didn’t know whether to admit
to the need to declare
yourself, the desire to see and be seen,
eventually you’ll meet him anyhow, appearing the same as a year ago,
he’ll look at you and there’s nothing
in that, a reflection of a shiny advertising panel,
he won’t slow down or speed up, and you also will not,
and also there’s nothing in that, you know only
that he sees you,
that he knows
you see him
nausea
your view is broad, you have certainty in majority opinion, you need make
no surveys, the physical features are tangible, and hence
objectively measurable, leanness, hairiness of limbs,
length of fingers, set of the lower jaw, and curve of the brow ridge,
and with these compare the atopic eczema carried on into adulthood,
that man
furthermore came and stated something else, did not agree, he cannot be right,
his perception is twisted and disturbed, it departs from the norm,
he would touch you,
in your version vis-à-vis touching (you) there is universal
and on request documentable in detail
disgust