Translated by the author and Harvey Vincent
Tracing the Unspoken is the English-language debut of an award-winning Slovenian poet and translator, which dares to openly speak (or write) the name of gay desire, in these compact, precise poems in prose.
“In Tracing the Unspoken, Milan Šelj has compiled a ledger of obsession: by applying language to shapeless silence, the individual tries to make sense of desire. In these fragments of narrative, the tacit, the implicit, the unspoken and the unspeakable are all eventually given voice. Passion is blocked by indifference, indifference unblocked by passion. And somehow love, once put into words, survives to thrive. The process is compelling, the expression eloquent.”
–Gregory Woods
“Instants of great sexual and emotional tension, caught in needle-sharp language of utter clarity and purity.”
–Christopher Whyte
Milan Šelj is a Slovenian poet and translator. He is the author of four poetry collections, and co-author of a satirical epistolary novel, Spolitika. Tracing the Unspoken is his most recent collection and his first in English translation. His own poems and his translations into Slovene appear in Moral bi spet priti, an anthology of contemporary European gay poetry. In translation, his poems have been published: in English, in The Queer Riveter magazine; in Hebrew in Kavafis’ Sons and Grandsons, an anthology of gay poetry published in Israel; and in Italian in the magazine Fili d’aquilone. Milan lives and works in London.
Harvey Vincent is a New York director, actor and teacher. A founding member of the American Theater Group of Paris he was invited by the Sorbonne's Institut d'Etudes théâtrales to write an experiential doctoral thesis on his work as a director and teacher of French students and professionals.
