Booking Balkan – Lidija Deduš, Ognjenka Lakićević

As part of the Booking Balkan program, poets Lidija Deduš (Croatia) and Ognjenka Lakićević (Serbia) discussed themes of resistance, women’s experience, critiques of contemporary society, as well as questions of freedom, the rise of fascism, activism, and patriarchy.

Their poetry, shaped by both personal and collective perspectives and rooted in growing up during the 1990s, partly illuminates that decade—its wars, loss of identity, and the struggle to confront its legacy—forming a powerful artistic response to the traumas of the post-Yugoslav space. It also preserves empathy in a time that often denies its own wounds.