Mila Haugová

Mila Haugová (1942) is a poet and translator. She has published many collections of poetry during her long literary career. Important for her work were: Premenlivý povrch / The Shifting Surface/, Čisté dni /Pure Days/, Praláska /Ancient Love/, Dáma s jednorožcom /The Lady with the Unicorn/, Krídlatá žena /The Winged Woman/, Zavretá záhrada (reči) /The Closed Riddle (of Human Language)/, Pomalá lukostrelkyňa /The Slow Archeress/, Plant room... Cetonia aurata, canti..amore, Srna pozerajúca na Polárku /Deer looking at Polaris/, Z rastlinstva /Of Plant Life/, and Dokonalé zviera(nie) /The Perfect Big Sho_t(ing)/.  Her autobiographical prose poems also need to be mentioned: Zrkadlo dovnútra /The Mirror In-Side/, Tvrdé drevo detstva /The Hardwood of Childhood/, Písať ako dýchať /Writing as Breathing/, and Archívy priestorov /Archives of Spaces/.

Mila Haugová's poetry collections have been translated into English, German, French, Russian, Slovenian, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the prestigious Dominik Tatarka Prize in 2014 for her poetry collection Cetonia aurata and her autobiographical prose Tvrdé drevo detstva /The Hardwood of Childhood/. In 2020, she received the European Vilenica Prize for Literature. She received the 2023 Tatrabanka Prize for Literature for her poetry collection Z Rastlinstva /Of Plant Life/ from the publishing house Skalná ruža. On 1 January 2023, the President of the Slovak Republic awarded her the 2nd Order of the Pribina Cross.

Writing poetry is as important to Mila Haugová as the act of breathing itself. The writing style she continues to follow is touching the human soul, heart, mind and body. She once wrote about it herself: "What is it to write a poem? To build another body inside..." She writes about how we all belong together: plants, animals, people, stars... through poetry and writing to help heal the wounds of the world.

She lives in Zajačia Dolina and in Bratislava alternatively, near her daughter Elvíra and her grand daughters Aimée and Sasha.