Publisher: The Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) 2002
http://www.svu2000.org/

This bilingual anthology of exile poetry is a tribute to those Czech and Slovak poets, living or dead, who write and have written verses about the homeland they lost because of the 1948 Communist putsch. Some were fortunate enough to live to see the day when their homeland would breathe free again.

The volume should please those Czechs and Slovaks living in the USA and Canada who will recognize many of the poets they know and of whom they can be justly proud. At the same time, it should be of great interest to our people in the Czech and Slovak Republics who have little familiarity with these writers because during the dark ages of the Communist regime their poems were not accessible as their authors were proscribed. They will surely be touched by these verses filled with a deep love for the poets’ homeland and an undying hope that one day its rights will be restored.

Vera Borkovec, PH.D., editor of this anthology, has taught poetry, written poetry, and translated poetry. She is an American University Emerita from the Department of Language and Foreign Studies where she taught Slavic languages and literature for almost thirty years. As a translator she is an active member of the American Translators’ Association (ATA), American Literary Translators’ Association (ALTA), and the Czech Obec prekladatelu (Translaters’ Guild). She is a longtime member and officer of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). While serving on the Society’s Executive Board she came up with the suggestion that the Frank Marlow Memorial Fund be used to support an endeavor which would certainly have been to his liking. This is how the bilingual anthology of Czech and Slovak exile poetry came to be born.