Supposed to Fly

Miroslav Holub is the Czech Republic's most important poet, and one of her leading scientists. His Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations was recently reissued by Bloodaxe, who also publish The Jingle Bell Principle, a collection of his prose pieces. Supposed to Fly is a highly original and entertaining gathering of poems - with some prose interruptions - drawn from his native city of Plzen, perhaps better known, for its world-famous beer, by its German name of Pilsen. The book also includes surrealist photographs accompanied by equally surrealist or absurdist captions.

'Holub's boyhood reminiscences are totally unsentimental. They are essentially a surrealist string of seemingly insignificant memories, from the unheated lavatories in his family's flat and collecting cowpats from an airfield for garden manure, to learning Greek while outside his school the first Wehrmacht trucks are rolling into the city, and the burying of politically compromising articles in the garden. Yet just because of their surrealist quality, combined with a light touch of sarcasm, they are often profoundly moving and significant. Not surprisingly - Holub was 15 when Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia - the poems and prose pieces relating to the war, more particularly the heavy Allied air raid on 17 April 1945, are among the most powerful. What is conspicuous in Holub's work is the Czech Soldier Svejk tradition, that typically Czech trait of poking gentle fun at authority, at unquestioningly accepted notions, and at taking oneself too seriously. His new book, with its deliberate focus on his Plzen background, is inevitably anchored in that Czech reality (or surreality) to a far greater extent than his earlier collections.' - Ewald Osers