Jasmina Topic
Jasmina Topić - author's portfolio: writer, editor, educator, singer-songwriter

photo by Aleksandar Stojković

Jasmina Topić

writer, singer-songwriter, editor, educator

Although poetry—and literature more broadly—is my primary form of artistic expression, my biography shows that I often combine literature with multimedia, while also working across a range of related fields, including editing, curating and hosting literary programmes, moderating literary workshops, and editing books.

Here, I would like to draw your attention to the profiles where you can explore my multimedia work, recordings of my literary presentations, follow me on Instagram, or browse the full list of my published books and other editions on my Goodreads page.

My Books

Writing is at the core of my artistic practice. The four books presented here are among my most recent publications and offer a glimpse into my literary work. In the BOOKS section, you can explore these and other publications in greater detail, including contributions to literary magazines, translations published in journals, anthologies, and other relevant editions. PDF versions of selected books are also available for download.

Sada smo na Ostrvima / Now we are on the Islands

Sada smo na Ostrvima /…

The selected poems published by Kulturni centar Vojvodine ,,Miloš Crnjanski" in 2022. as part of the literary award for female authors ,,Milica Stojadinović Srpkinja" in Novi Sad, in 2021. The author of the selection is Gorica Radmilović, and the critical text - afterword is written by Dragana V. Todoreskov

Privremeni boravak / Temporary Domicile

Privremeni boravak / Temporary Domicile

Seveth sole-author poetry book is published by Arhipelag, in Belgrade, at the end of 2020. The editor is eminent Serbian author and critic, Gojko Božović. The book received an award ,,Milica Stojadinović Srpkinja" for female authors in 2021.

Plaža Nesanica / Insomnia Beach

Plaža Nesanica / Insomnia Beach

Published at the end of 2016. by Cultural Centre Novi Sad. Editor: Alen Bešić. The book was short-listed for the three most eminent poetry awards in Serbia in the following 2017.

Dok neko šapuće naša imena / While Someone is Whispering out Our Names

Dok neko šapuće naša imena…

Fifth poetry book, published in the contemporary poetry edition Najbolja in Pančevo, The Society of writers and translators from Pančevo, in 2012. Editor: Nikola Vujčić

Featured pages regarding my work

My literary work extends beyond the written page, encompassing music, sound, and spoken poetry. Here, you can explore selected pages that reflect different aspects of my multimedia practice. Discover my first original music album, created as a musical interpretation of one of my published books, listen to recordings of music and poetry readings on SoundCloud, or explore my work on Lyrikline, an international poetry platform created by the Haus für Poesie in Berlin, which brings poets and translators together from around the world. There, you can listen to recordings of my poetry readings and explore selected poems in English and German translation.
Privremeni boravak by Jasmina Topić on Bandcamp

Privremeni boravak on Bandcamp

Visit Bandcamp to discover and listen to Privremeni boravak by Jasmina Topić.

Listen on Bandcamp
SoundCloud profil

Listen to us on SoundCloud

Visit our SoundCloud profile and listen to our latest audio content.

Open SoundCloud
Jasmina Topić on Lyrikline

Jasmina Topić on Lyrikline

Discover Jasmina Topić’s poetry, biography and audio recordings on Lyrikline.

Visit Lyrikline Profile

From selected reviews

Excerpt from a Review of the Selected Poems Sada smo na ostrvima / Now, We Are on the Islands

Jasmina Topić’s poetry, with its semantic polyphony, is capable of synchronising dream and waking, body and soul, the boundless blue of the Adriatic and the confines of one’s own room. The rich and unruly lyrical imaginary of this poet, brought into focus through the editorial vision of Gorica Radmilović, allows individual earlier poems and distant images to draw close before our eyes in entirely new and unexpected ways, refreshed by their new surroundings, while the structural integrity of the collection’s cycles remains firmly intact.

By dismantling collections, cycles, and even individual poems, and reassembling them into new wholes according to a clear conceptual framework, Gorica Radmilović has left the door to this poetry slightly ajar—a poetry that does not reveal itself all at once, nor in its entirety. It is up to us to enter the room of Jasmina Topić’s verses and melancholic landmarks with care, heightened attention, and raised expectations.

Excerpt from a review of the book Temporary Stay Temporary Stay demonstrates Jasmina Topić’s poetic maturity.

As in this collection, the lyrical subject is a traveller, speaking from different, sometimes very distant places. Travel becomes a way of reading the world and oneself, an opportunity to gain new insight into one’s relationships with others—especially with a loved one whom the lyrical subject carries within, wherever the journey may lead. Although at times marked by a sense of frustration and loss, the speaker in these new poems does not give in to the tireless evocation of the past or to reviving what life might have brought. Instead, the poems turn towards an examination of the speaker’s own inclination to constant self-questioning, gradually recognising that personal landmarks, when viewed from another angle, are in fact the bitter sediment of experience. At the heart of Temporary Stay lies the Adriatic and its singular blue, created by the sky refracted in the sea and the depths reflected upon the surface of the water. This collection courageously searches for a personal blue, with the sense that it will appear only rarely, in flashes, since it is difficult to arrange a meeting between the clear sky above us and an inner landscape that has become lucid at precisely the right moment.

Excerpt from a review of the book Plaža Nesanica / Insomnia Beach

Twenty years after the publication of her first poetry collection, and following a six-year hiatus, the Cultural Centre of Novi Sad published Jasmina Topić’s sixth collection, Plaža Nesanica (Insomnia Beach). The collection’s scope, its graphic design and photographic documentation, as well as the temporal and spatial specificity of its cycles, bearing witness to a continuous poetic practice, nevertheless suggest that the hiatus was only apparent, and that in the meantime the poet had been devotedly working on a new collection. The book was published in the Anagram series, which in recent years has featured works by some of the most prominent contemporary poets of different generations, thereby reaffirming the poet’s established place within the context of contemporary Serbian literature. At the same time, a collection that so powerfully marks twenty years of active poetic—and editorial—work constitutes, in its own right, a significant literary event.

A Little Something to Begin With

For a start, listen to the music video for ,,Jadran Intro (Na moru si)” on my YouTube channel, and read one of my favourite poems, “We Never Lived Except When Reading.”

The Poetry and Wine festival, Ptuj, Slovenia, 2011