GORAN SIMIC is well-known in Bosnia for his poems, essays and reviews.

     He saw out the siege of Sarajevo with his wife and two children. He wrote the libretto for the opera Europe, to music by Nigel Osborne, which was performed in Sarajevo in February 1995. His play for children, A Sarajevan Fairy Tale, was performed in Sarajevo before touring Switzerland and Germany. He recently received a 'Freedom to Write' award from PEN. Since the war he has settled with his family in Canada.

     His poems arising from the siege have been translated by David Harsent and published in a limited edition by Cargo Press: The Sorrow of Sarajevo.

THE SORROW OF SARAJEVO

Goran Simic and David Harsent, Limited edition 250 copies.
ISBN 1 899980 01 6 paper £6.00  254 x 160 24 pp
Images by Robert McNab

     David Harsent's vivid English rendering of Simic's haunting siege poems. Eight poems written during the siege of Sarajevo, sometimes beautiful, often harrowing, an impressive witness to horrific events. Two of the poems formed part of the libretto for Nigel Osborne's opera, Sarajevo, which had its premiere at the Royal Festival Hall, London in1994.

       'The National Library burned for three days last August
                and the city was choked with black snow.

        Set free from the stack, characters wandered the streets,
                mingling with passers-by and the souls of dead soldiers.
    
        I saw Werther sitting on the ruined graveyard fence; I saw                Quasimodo swinging one-handed from a minaret.'
                                                          Lament for Vijecnica


         'Sarajevo, January, 1993.
         My friend put his wife and children on the bus
         to God-knows-where,
         and wrote on the frozen window, I am with you.
         After that moment he wrote no more ...'
                                                           A Common Story