Pavel Petr: To extasy before the Seraphim
– Czechia
Born in 1969 in Zlín (formerly the communist Gottwaldov), he trained as a metal worker. He has had both manual and intellectual occupations; previously working as an editor at the publishing house Host, and currently as an editor of the magazine Prostor Zlín. He has had published twenty books of poetry and prose: with his first publication in 1990 (Déšť ve vězení řeky, Rain in the Prison of the River), and his most recent in 2022 (Básně / Elegie IV., Poems / Elegies IV). "The unquestionably new," wrote Jiří Kuběna in his review of the poet's debut, "that what this Thin Harpist, Playing at the Foot of the Throne of Israel, Young Dancer Always Reaching Extasy Again Before the Seraphim Guarded Ark of the Covenant brings – finally! – into our often drought-stricken floodplains, whipped barren by artificial irrigation, is the moisture of his mighty MELOS, Lashing the long-awaited Pathos, the Rain still within the Prison of the Heraclitean River of Time – but at the same time Dew Descending from Above, sent to restore the Earth's Countenance…"