Photo Goran Tomčić
Pino Pograjc, born in 1997, is currently in his last year of dual-subject MA studies of English and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. He grew up in Kamnik, where (as a teenager) he first read his poems in front of an audience at the slam poetry competition “Pest besed” (A Fistful of Words) at the Kotlovnica Youth Centre and has won several times. He is included in the LGBT+ anthology Srca v igri and the high school anthology Mimobežnice. In 2021, he won first place in the English Haiku category of the Ikkyu Student Society competition, he won first place in the poetry category of the competition, organised by the France Balantič Library in Kamnik, and he won in the poetry category in the “Together: resistance, support, healing!” competition, organised by the Maribor Youth Cultural Centre. In 2022 he became part of the selection jury for the Ljubljana LGBT Film Festival, the oldest film festival of its sort in Europe. He has been attending Brane Mozetič’s poetry workshops since he completed his undergraduate Comparative Literature studies with his thesis The role of civic engagement in Brane Mozetič’s poetry, after which he came into contact with the poet. In 2022, the publishing house Črna skrinjica (“Black Box”) published his literary debut, Trgetanje (a portmanteau of “trganje” and “drgetanje” – “ripping” and “shivering” in Slovene), on the initiative of editor Dejan Koban. The accompanying text was written by Veronika Razpotnik. In the same year, he was awarded the prize for Best Literary Debut at the Slovenian Book Fair. He has presented his poetry debut in Ljubljana, Kamnik, Škofja Loka, Gornja Radgona, Nova Gorica, Kranj and Koper. In 2023, he joined the international poetry project POT-VOT, which aims to introduce contemporary poetry to secondary school students.
