Mato Uljarević, laureate of the “Novica Tadić” poetry award in 2022, which is awarded under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, is staying in Gračanica for the first time. The collection of poetry “Suteran” is his debut with about 60 poems that describe events from everyday life.
“Inspiration comes mainly from events that are apparently normal, we accepted them as normal, but in fact they are somehow problematic and should be questioned from some other angles. So, in all those songs, I’m interested in what’s around me and what I’m trying to observe from a new angle, from that underground perspective. These are mostly some dark motives, some absurd situations”, explained Uljarević.
The motto of the entire collection is “Na visoko digigli se sutereni” a line from the song “Our days” by Vladislav Petković Dis: “The basements have risen high, All the treacherous, all the damned and all the little ones. They have become our sovereigns today. They saw all the dens and canals.”
“Those motives are simply something that only crystallizes in a person. I didn’t think about it, it’s something that comes naturally, what interests me in poetry because I run away from sentimentalism, so it kind of opened up,” the poet said.
Uljarević added that he got into poetry by accident.
“In the beginning, I wanted to express myself through short prose, through some essays. However, as I researched, worked, experimented, I realized that poetry is much more rewarding. That attracted me and then I collected those songs, sent them to that competition without much expectations”.
In addition to writing, Mato Uljarević also paints. He is a participant in this year’s Vidovdan Art Colony.
“At the invitation of the Gallery from Pristina, here at the House of Culture in Gračanica, at the invitation of Nebojša Jevtić and the entire team. They are doing a very good thing, bringing in people who might never have come otherwise. Here, I personally am in Kosovo for the first time and that thing is significant”, he said.
The young artist from Montenegro added that coming to Kosovo is a kind of pilgrimage.
“Especially for the Serbs from Montenegro who have that Njegoš vow in some of their subconscious, who experience Kosovo in a special way. Of course, Serbs everywhere perceive Kosovo as their motherland, as the most important place in our cultural area. I saw Gracanica for the first time, I saw the great Visoke Dečani, the Peć Patriarchate and that is one of the great experiences of life”, he pointed out.
Writer and journalist Živojin Rakočević assessed that Mato Uljarević is a rare talented and gifted young man.
“Uljarević managed to go through some stages through his creative process that are very important for every young person. Many of you in schools and even in colleges publish your books and write your songs and that’s where their singing ends, ends in emotions, drowns in life. The singing and poetics of Mata Uljarević came true with the first book, which is on the one hand very important, and on the other hand dangerous, because the question is what now and how to develop poetics which, as we have heard here, is based on the best traditions of contemporary Serbian literary creation,” he said. he is.
Rakočević added that while reading this book, he realized that Uljarević was searching for a universal image that develops on three levels: the first is thought, the second pictorial, and the third level is the contemporary or political context.
“An exceptional understanding of reality, an exceptional nuance of the political, an exceptional moment and context in which you can clearly see the state of a hermetically sealed community that tried to build a new identity and that in that new identity a very small number of people tried to impose themselves as a value, to lock and that outside of that key, Mato Uljarević and others like him cannot speak. It is important to say that, in addition to Mata Ugljarević and Radoja Femić, the professor, and Aleksandar Ćuković and several other young people who recognize the Serbian keyness, they skipped that context of homeland in Montenegro, he said, adding that “Mata Uljarević is an important innovation for our literature”.
“Thank you for crossing borders, thank you for your decency, thank you for preserving our language and thank you for preserving poetry,” Rakočević said to Mata Uljarević.
The promotion of the poetry collection “Suteren” was organized by the Gračanica Cultural Center as part of the Vidovdan festivities.
