Struga ’75

Abstract

I was invited to Yugoslavia because Galway Kinnell once gave my name, by mail, to Meto Jovanovski in Yugoslavia. Meto was planning to translate American poetry for a Macedonian anthology. This was in October 1973 when Galway and I were teaching at Sarah Lawrence. Meto recommended that Yugoslavia’s International Poetry Festival invite me as the official U.S. representative. I was first invited in 1974 but was unable to accept the invitation. During the spring of 1975, while I was participating in the visiting writer’s program at Columbia University, William Jay Smith, its acting director, told me about his trip to Yugoslavia for the festival in 1974. His description excited my imagination. At the same time an invitation to participate in the 1975 Yugoslavian festival arrived. Traveling expenses would cost more than a thousand dollars. The festival would handle expenses while I was there, but the problem was how to pay for transportation. Bill Smith contacted some people he knew in the State Department and thereby sparked the interest that finally caused the U.S. government to sponsor my trip. Technically this was called a “cultural grant.”...