Ivan V. Lalić

Lalić’s domestic reputation grew slowly. In the 1960s and 1970s, his work did not chime well with the avant-garde approach prevalent in Yugoslav poetry - nor with the emotive lyricism popular with broader audiences, as in the work of Branko Miljković, whom Lalić addresses in his poem "Prolećna liturgija za mrtvog pesnika" ('Spring liturgy for a dead poet'). But through the 1980s and 1990s he gradually became recognized as a major voice in his country's poetry. By 1997, Aleksandar Jovanović, editor of Lalić’s 1997 Dela ('Collected Works'), described his oeuvre as standing "not only at the peak of Serbian poetry in the second half of [the 20th] century, but at the peak of Serbian poetry in general”. Abroad, however, Lalić's reputation grew more quickly. He was among seven non-Anglophone poets featured in the inaugural 1965 issue of the UK journal Modern Poetry in Translation, edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort (see #Bibliography below). Hughes and Weissbort praised these poets for the way they tackled "universally comprehensible" issues and did "not fight shy of philosophy" – features which are central to Lalić’s work. Lalić is now recognised internationally as one of Yugoslavia’s and Serbia’s most accomplished late 20th-century poets. Book-length translations of his poems have appeared in six languages (English, French, Italian, Polish, Hungarian and Macedonian). Individual poems have appeared in more than 20 languages. UK critics have described his poetry as "vital and intense", with a "magisterial transcendent quality", and his "lyrics [as] ablaze with successes of metaphor", with an "irresistible blend of private lyricism and public force". Lalić also wrote a radio drama (Majstor Hanuš, 1965) and a body of literary criticism. He edited and translated book-length anthologies of modern French poetry, German poetry (with several co-translators) and American poetry (with Branka Lalić as co-translator).

Lalić was awarded many literary prizes, including Yugoslavia's and Serbia's most prestigious awards: • Nagrada tribine mladih (1960), • Zmajeva nagrada (1961), • Nagrada jugoslovenske radiodifuzije (1965), • Nolitova nagrada (1969), • Nagrada "Miloš Đurić" (1978), • Nagrada "Branko Miljković" (1985), • Gost Disovog proleća (1987), • Oktobarska Nagrada Beograda (1988), • Nagrada "Meša Selimović" (1992), • Nagrada "Stanislav Vinaver" (1992), • Nagrada lista Borba (1992), • Velika Bazjaške povelja (Romania, 1994), • Nagrada "Braća Micić" (1995) • Nagrada "Vasko Popa" (1996), • Žička hrisovulja (1996), • Račanska povelja (1996), • Vitalova Nagrada "Zlatni suncokret" (1996). In English translation (see below), his poems have gained six awards: • Thornton Wilder Prize (1990), • European Poetry Translation Prize (1991), • 2nd Prize, British Comparative Literature Association Translation Competition (1992), • European Poetry Translation Prize (Joint Winner, 1997), • 1st Prize, John Dryden Translation Competition (2013), • 3rd Prize, Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation (2019).