UQP acquires Vucic debut poetry collection
UQP has acquired world rights to After War, the debut poetry collection from Dženana Vucic.
After War is ‘a memoiristic poetry collection which unfurls from the dislocating trauma of the Bosnian war into the present day’, said the publisher. ‘An unreservedly political project, the collection highlights the resonances between historical violences and those being committed in the present day. Although dealing with heavy subject matter, the collection mobilises humour and linguistic play and often lingers in moments of levity and warmth. In this, it refuses to be flattened to a trauma plot. It is a collection of survival, witness and resistance.’
Vucic (she/they) is a Bosnian-Australian poet, essayist, critic and editor. Her poems have been shortlisted for the 2023 Judith Wright Poetry Prize, the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Prize and the 2024 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Her essays, reviews and poetry have been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Crikey, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, Overland, Sydney Review of Books and more.
Publisher Aviva Tuffield said, ‘[Vucic’s] first poetry collection is a standout: multilingual, lyrical, experimental and wide-ranging; reflecting on familial violence and separation, migration, refugee experiences and Islamophobia, among other things. Across the collection readers are variously located as “outsiders” to certain historical moments and, at others, situated as “insiders” and implicated in the silences and structures that enable acts of violence, whether on families, communities or the environment. This is a searing debut whose power lies in its strength clarity of vision.’
Vucic said, ‘After War is a collection of poems unfurling from the violence of the Bosnian war into the violences of now. Multilingual and formally varied, the collection explores trauma and its consequences, language and its limits, witnessing and what it means to witness. These are autobiographical poems but ones that I hope speak wider and deeper than their moment.’
UQP plans to publish After War in May 2026.
Photo credit: Leah Jing McIntosh.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
