News from the other world

Curatorial Note

News from the Other World: Poems in Romani is a bilingual collection by Roma poet Ilija Jovanović, presenting poems in the Gurbet dialect of Romani alongside English translations by Melitta Depner. Drawing on Jovanović’s childhood and youth in Serbia and his later life as a migrant in Austria, the poems address family and community life, poverty, displacement, prejudice, belonging, love, fatherhood, faith, and the experience of cultural dislocation. Jovanović, a Gurbet Rom who settled in Vienna in 1971, became an important figure in Austrian Romani cultural life and served as chairman of Romano Centro. The volume also includes a memoir of the poet’s childhood and an essay on Roma history. Published in London by Francis Boutle Publishers in 2010, it represents a significant example of contemporary Romani literature in which Romani is not merely an object of linguistic documentation but the primary language of literary expression.