Vasko Popa

Vasile "Vasko" Popa (Serbian Cyrillic: Васко Попа; 29 June 1922 – 5 January 1991) was a Serbian poet. Popa was born in the village of Grebenac (Romanian: Grebenaț), Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia). After finishing high school, he enrolled as a student at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy. He continued his studies at the University of Bucharest and in Vienna. During World War II, he fought as a partisan and was imprisoned in a German concentration camp in Bečkerek (today Zrenjanin, Serbia).

After the war in 1949, Popa graduated from the Romanic group of the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade University. He published his first poems in the magazines Književne novine (Literary Magazine) and the daily Borba (Struggle).

From 1954 until 1979, he was the editor of the publishing house Nolit. In 1953 he published his first major verse collection, Kora (Bark). His other important work included Nepočin-polje (No-Rest Field, 1956), Sporedno nebo (Secondary Heaven, 1968), Uspravna zemlja (Earth Erect, 1972), Vučja so (Wolf Salt, 1975), and Od zlata jabuka (Apple of Gold, 1978), an anthology of Serbian folk literature. His Collected Poems, 1943–1976, a compilation in English translation, appeared in 1978, with an introduction by the British poet Ted Hughes.

On 29 May 1972 Vasko Popa founded The Literary Municipality Vršac and originated a library of postcards, called Slobodno lišće (Free Leaves). In the same year, he was elected to become a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Vasko Popa was one of the founders of Vojvodina Academy of Sciences and Arts, established on 14 December 1979 in Novi Sad. He is the first laureate of the Branko's award (Brankova nagrada) for poetry, established in honour of the poet Branko Radičević. In the year 1957 Popa received another award for poetry, Zmaj's Award (Zmajeva nagrada), which honours the poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj. In 1965 Popa received the Austrian state award for European literature. In 1976, he received the Branko Miljković poetry award, in 1978 the Yugoslav state Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia Award, and in 1983 the literary award Skender Kulenović.

Vasko Popa died on 5 January 1991 in Belgrade and is buried in the Aisle of the Deserving Citizens in Belgrade's New Cemetery. He was a good friend with French poet Alain Bosquet.

Popa was married to Jovanka "Hasha" Singer from his post-war move to Belgrade in the 1940s until the end of his life. In 2001, a year after her death, Hasha’s ashes were interred alongside Vasko’s remains.