Frozen Embraces. (Original writing);

This thematically divided creative writing poetry dissertation includes seventy-one poems which range in length from a short nine-line poem to a four-page poem and in form from a single long or short stanza to multiple stanzas and sonnet-like verse. In Part One (21 poems) the poems describe my internal quest as a Serbian woman in search of a world to which I can belong; I live away from my loved ones, and my country is at war. The poems recall the way life used to be when I was a child under communism, now gone; the Mostar bridge still standing, now fallen; how I used to dry my clothes inside, letting them dry on furniture as in the title poem Frozen Embraces, now having to use a dryer. My generation has lost everything: youth, opportunity, the communist system, and it turns to the Serbian Orthodox religion. In Part Two (29 poems) I revisit the Balkans changed after almost four years of the civil war. Ordinary people have suffered. The poems recall what it was like for my parents after the Second World War; Granddad\u27s tales of the First and Second World Wars. The poems trace the path of the father who became a diplomat, rising from the ranks of a peasant boy and a customs officer, who took the family to exotic places like Salonika, and Bombay. I question Western values and look back onto the communist East with similar questions. In Part Three (21 poems) the poems document my visit to Europe where I try to be an outside observer. I go to concerts, visit painting and sculpture exhibitions, paint. What used to be all right has been twisted out of shape, stained. My own mother has breast cancer. I\u27m afraid of this hereditary disease. I want to enjoy life while I can. Perhaps there is hope for us. I realize that turmoil shakes human beings, wakes us up to reevaluate everything taught, all values, and create new ones in the place of old ones