Mila Haugová: Poetic Archives
– Slovakia
Shew was born in Budapest in 1942.She graduated from the University of Agriculture in Nitra and worked as an agronomist, later as a teacher. In 1972, she moved to Bratislava, in 1986-96 she worked as an editor in the Romboid magazine. At present, she lives in Bratislava.She started publishing her first works in 1976 in the Nové slovo [New word] magazine, made her book debut in 1980 with a collection of poems Hrdzavá hlina [Rusty Dirt]. In her works, she captures everyday events, tragic moments of loved ones, spouse relationships, their fragility and possible disintegration. Part of her work is influenced by the paintings by her life partner Petr Ondreička. She became a poet of a cultivated form, she focused on unequivocally feminine poetry full of expressing feelings, even at the cost of increasing the vulnerability and fragility of a human. She is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry, the most translated Slovak poet, in 2019, she published a documentary from her diary entries – from personal, travel to herbal.