About the Book

Inner Courtyard is a poetry collection by Dušan Šarotar that revisits and recontextualises some of his earlier poems while introducing new ones. Through his poetry, we journey from the land — particularly its vast plains — to the sea, a recurring presence throughout almost all of Šarotar’s writing, both poetic and otherwise.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of his work is the seamless movement between different literary forms and genres, blending narrative, personal reflection, and essayistic writing. This fluidity runs through all his books, whether novels or poetry collections.

For Šarotar, poetry is everywhere, but it is most at home in silence and solitude, where his lyrical speaker often finds himself. His observers are solitary figures or mere human silhouettes, their attention fixed on something beyond the horizon or the mist. Something that, despite its apparent elusiveness, carries the deepest meaning — a soul, a word, a voice, or simply the wind bringing with it the unknown.

Perhaps this is why, in this collection, Šarotar returns to the most fundamental elements of the unknown: the alphabet, our first encounter with written language, the first framework through which we shaped and gave meaning to everything we experienced and absorbed into our lives.

Or perhaps we can venture even further with Šarotar, towards the very first language of all: dialect. The dialect poems at the end of the book can thus be read as the heart of the entire journey between land and sea — the source from which everything emerges, the essence of what makes us souls in need of language, in need of poetry.