Who Will Slay the Wolf?

Ali Podrimja

About the book

The Kosovo Albanian poet, Ali Podrimja (1942-2012), is considered by many to be the most typical representative of modern Albanian verse in Kosovo and is certainly the Kosovo poet with the widest international reputation. His verse is compact in structure, and his imagery is direct, terse and devoid of any artificial verbosity. Every word counts. The present selection of verse is designed to provide the reader with an overview of the poetic evolution of Ali Podrimja. It touches upon the early years of dynamic optimism in the 1960s, visits the haunts of anguish and personal solitude in the 1970s and 1980s, and brings the reader inevitably to the apocalyptic 1990s in Kosovo during which the recusant voice of the poet was more indispensable than ever.

ISBN: 978-1-5141-0030-1

Ali Podrimja who was born in 1942 and died in 2012 is a Kosovar Albanian poet. He is considered by many to be the most typical representative of modern Albanian verse in Kosovo and is certainly the Kosovar poet with the biggest international reputation. His books have been translated into 23 languages. "Who will slay the wolf" is a book with a collection of his poems. Podrimja was always one of my all-time favorites Kosovar writers. The most beautiful poem from him for me is also "The beauty". In this poem, he speaks about how in every city that he travels he finds a new love and gives incentives to return to that city. Every time when I read that poem especially while I'm abroad, I’m reminded of my hometown Prishtina. I often find myself thinking of the cosmopolitan concept of connecting an individual with a city when I read that poem and how this connection enriches my experience in every city that I visit.