Aleš Šteger Readings
'Šteger has become one of the most significant European poets of the new century.' - Carolyn Forché
Aleš Šteger was born in 1973 in Ptuj, Slovenia, where he grew up, then part of the former Yugoslavia ruled by Tito, which gained its independence when he was 18. He published his first collection at the age of 22, Chessboard of Hours in 1995, and was immediately recognised as a key voice in the new generation of post-Communist poets not only in Slovenia but throughout central Europe.
Notable for its moral engagement, Šteger’s poetry is acutely precise in its observation and concentration as well as multi-layered and technically versatile, ingenious and inventive, adventurous and playful yet serious in intention. Above all, his poems are incessantly curious in their investigations which the reader is invited to share – and he loves to ambush the reader with the unexpected.
His influences are mainly European, including the Serbian master poet Vasko Popa, as well as German and Spanish-language poets he has translated into Slovenian, such as Bachmann, Benn, Huchel, Neruda and Vallejo. He has added his own strand of writing to the distinctively European genre of prose poems in pieces which describe everyday objects in minute terms, only to explode in the imagination through what he perceives in them. He is also known for his prose books and experimental writing including his Written on Site pieces.
Burning Tongues, his first major poetry book to be published in the UK, was published in November 2022 by Bloodaxe Books and was translated by Brian Henry. Aleš Šteger has read at festivals all over Europe, including at the Ledbury and Newcastle Poetry Festivals in 2019 and at Cork International Poetry Festival in May 2023.
‘For anyone interested in the state of Europe, Aleš Šteger’s Burning Tongues is an indispensable read. Widely travelled, Šteger is among the continent’s most important mid-generation poets, a stylish Central European culture-maker, by turn playwright, editor, festival director, visual artist and cultural ambassador. He writes with peculiarly Slovenian playfulness about contemporary society and sensibility: the hyper-reality of his work fizzes with zeitgeist. This substantial volume is easy to read and beautifully translated.’ – Fiona Sampson, The Tablet (Summer Reading 2023)
FORTHCOMING READINGS
Newcastle Poetry Festival
Saturday 3 October, 6pm-8.30pm
Griffin Gala: Rachael Boast, Carolyn Forché, Sarah Howe, Roger Reeves & Aleš Šteger
Rachael Boast is a poet, editor and disability advocate. Her fifth poetry collection, Volvelle, was published by Picador in July 2026. She won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2011 and has been shortlisted for the Griffin Prize (2014) and the T.S. Eliot Prize (2016). She edited the 2025 Bloodaxe Books anthology Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets.
Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit in 1950. Her second book, The Country Between Us (1981), drew on her experiences in El Salvador. Her anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993), remains a classic text. Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026 is published by Bloodaxe in September.
Sarah Howe is a Hong Kong-born poet and editor. Her first book, Loop of Jade (2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second collection, Foretokens, was shortlisted for both the T.S.Eliot and Forward prizes. She is Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus.
Roger Reeves is the author of the award-winning Dark Days: Fugitive Essays (2023) and the poetry collection Best Barbarian (2022), which received the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
Aleš Šteger is a poet and prose writer from Ljubljana, Slovenia, whose books have been translated into over 20 languages. His latest publication in English is Burning Tongues: New and Selected Poems, published by Bloodaxe in 2023.
More details and booking here.
PAST EVENTS
Online launch reading by Philip Gross and Aleš Šteger, Tuesday 22 November 2022
Bloodaxe Books hosted this launch reading by Philip Gross and Aleš Šteger celebrating the publication of their new poetry books on Tuesday 22 November.
Philip and Aleš read live from their new books and discussed them with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, and with each other. Aleš Šteger speaks fluent English, and read his poems in both Slovenian and in Brian Henry's English translations.
Reading at Newcastle Poetry Festival, Saturday 4 May 2019
[01 August 2023]
