Lenka Chytilová

Lenka Chytilová (born 11 May 1952) is a Czech poet and translator.

Lenka Chytilová was born on 11 May 1952 in Hradec Králové.

In the late 1960s, Chytilová began publishing poems in the local newspaper Pochodeň, and in the following two decades she published in the magazines Mladý svět, Literární měsíčník and Mladá fronta, among others, and later mainly in Literární noviny.

She first attended the J. K. Tyl Gymnasium in her native city until 1970.

She then studied Czech and German at Masaryk University in Brno.

She graduated in 1975 with a thesis on the poet Paul Celan.

She then worked as a poetry editor for the Kruh publishing house in Hradec Králové, which specialized in the East Bohemia region.

She published non-fiction books related to the region as well as fiction by East Bohemian authors.

In 1977, her first volume of poetry, Dopisy (literally translated as "letters"), was published by Kruh.

These were love poems.

This was followed by Třetí planeta ("The Third Planet"), Proč racek přemýšlí ("Why Does the Seagull Think"), where she took up the theme of childhood, and Průsvitný Sisyfos ("The Transparent Sisyphus").

She was dismissed in 1989 for political reasons, but was reinstated as editor-in-chief in 1990.

She held this position for two years, after which she worked for the publishing house Ivo Železný in Prague.

Chytilová also translated works by other authors from German into Czech in the 1990s, including Henry Seymour, Martin Eisele, Brigitte Huber and Charlotte Lamb.

In Nebe nadoraz (1995), she turned to religious themes.

Chytilová writes modern, reflective poetry that strives for originality.

She plays with the sound of words and their etymological relationship.

Her last position was as a teacher of Czech language and literature at J. K. Tyl Gymnasium in 2011.