Eqrem Basha ( mk, Еќрем Баша, ) (born 1948 in

Debar Debar ( mk, Дебaр ; Albanian: ''Dibër''/''Dibra'' or ''Dibra e Madhe;'' ) is a city in the western part of North Macedonia, near the border with Albania, off the road from Struga to Gostivar. It is the seat of Debar Municipality. Debar has ...

PR Macedonia The Socialist Republic of Macedonia ( mk, Социјалистичка Република Македонија, Socijalistička Republika Makedonija), or SR Macedonia, commonly referred to as Socialist Macedonia or Yugoslav Macedonia, was ...

FPR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yu ...

) is among the most respected contemporary writers of

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...

in recent years. His life and literary production are intimately linked to Kosovo and its capital

Pristina Pristina, ; sr, / (, ) is the capital and largest city of Kosovo. The city's municipal boundaries in Pristina District form the largest urban center in Kosovo. After Tirana, Pristina has the second largest population of ethnic Albanians and ...

, where he has lived and worked since the 1970s.

Career

It was in the early 1970s, during Kosovo's most prominent period, that Eqrem Basha moved to Pristina to study language and literature at the newly created Albanian language university there. He later worked for Pristina television as editor of the drama section, but was fired for political reasons. Basha is the author of eight volumes of innovative verse spanning the years from 1971 to 1995, three volumes of short stories and numerous translations (in particular French literature and drama). He works at the publishing industry in Pristina. Eqrem Basha is an enigmatic poet. Perplexing, fascinating, and difficult to classify in a literary sense, he succeeds in transmitting a certain mystique to the inquisitive reader. At one moment he seems coolly logical and shows an admirable ability to reason deductively, and the next moment he is overcome by absurd flights of fancy into a surrealistic world where apparently nothing makes any sense. Basha has an urbane view of things and delights in the daily absurdities of life. Nothing could be more foreign to him than the inspiration many of his fellow poets derive from the rich folklore traditions of the northern mountain tribes and verse of social commitment. His verse is light, colloquial and much less declamatory than that of many of his predecessors.

References

Albanian literature from Robert Elsie
Living people 1948 births Kosovan writers People from Debar Kosovan translators {{Kosovo-writer-stub