In 2020, the writer and poet Dr Mirjam Dular published her first collection of photo-verses. It was followed by two further collections, SND – Spoznavanje narave in družbe (Getting to Know Nature and Society, 2021) and Lirika (Lyric Poetry, 2022), both likewise published by Layer House in Kranj. At the very end of 2024, her fourth collection of photo-verses, entitled Biotia, was completed. It was printed in January 2025 and published by Hirondelle, a publishing house based in Ljubljana.
The term biotia is a neologism formed from the words biography and poetry, which also correspond to the two thematic sections of the book, each comprising 33 poems. The neologism biotia suggests an experimental play with language.
The poetry draws on the author’s life and her feelings surrounding pivotal events. However, reality is poetically transformed, and personal stories become universal artistic images. Experiences and memories are intertwined with introspection within the context of an environment that often determines our actions, though not necessarily our responses.
The poetic form known as the photo-verse reflects the times we live in. It resembles a kind of social media post – consisting of a title, a photograph and a written message that often thoughtfully addresses contemporary social issues.
Mirjam Dular has published her photo-verses on the literary platform Pesem.si. She also carried out her own project, A Poem a Day (Pesem na dan), in which she wrote one poem every day for 1,001 consecutive days. The project concluded in the spring of 2022.
In recent years, poetry collections by other authors have also begun to appear in which the authors’ own photographs are interspersed among the poems.
