Our teacher started bringing a guest to our class from time to time. It was always the same person, Goran Delic, the famous poet. His poems were not on our reading list, but the teacher would always introduce him in the same manner: “Children, our guest today is comrade Delic, the famous poet,” so we took it for granted. […]

He was a thin man in his late fifties, wore glasses and had a slightly harsh voice when reading his works, different from when he was speaking. I wouldn’t let anyone read my poems if my life depended on it. And he was cool about it — a grown man not only admitting to writing poetry but daring to read it aloud, in front of everyone. He gave me freedom. In my world of one room, eternal struggle, hard work, my father’s factory, my mother’s getting up before dawn, his books were the only proof of a different existence. I saw, with my own eyes, someone who met the Muse daily, who had breakfast with her, lunch and dinner, who went to bed with her, somone who had his eyes open for brooks and paths, winds and willows, and swallows that flew high over the factory chimneys.

— from The Book of Revenge: A Blues for Yugoslavia (Dragan Todorovic)