“In lines profitably chiseled, Dizdarevic handles her themes light as a cat’s walk. These poems carry forward reverence and terror but also an abiding spirit of courageous observance that reveals her heroic mind.”

Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle and The Absurd Man

“What I Learned About Dogs in the Village is at once a tender family history, an excavation of inherited trauma, and a testament to the Bosnian War—and all forgotten wars—that continue to be waged in the bodies of subsequent generations. In a culture of hyper-exposure to violence and the political glamour of foreign conflict, Dizdarevic’s lyrical, evocative, and haunting lines cut through our collective imagination of war to focus on its felt effects on the body: the muscles, the stomach, the heart, the brain and its perceptions. Powerful in her disinterest in comforting the reader, and incisive in her implication not just of nation but of herself, Dizdarevic asks where our desire to inflict pain on others comes from, both in the context of the Bosnian Genocide and within the interpersonal relationships that reflect our constellations of woundedness and harm. What I Learned About Dogs in the Village is a landmark of war poetry, of poetry of witness, and of a brave and precarious self-examination that models how we might come to terms with the conflicts of our own blood.”

Lana Reeves, author of How to Love a Sinking Island

“This book is completely Muslim, completely Serbian, completely female, and completely unexpected. From small villages with mysterious axemen to busy street corners of Belgrade, What I Learned About Dogs in the Village features filigreed poetry that showcases primordial inner landscapes.”

Milica Špadijer, author of Novo Groblje and Šar-planina

“An ambitious, bold work that demands a curious reader, What I Learned About Dogs in the Village is, at times, unbearably honest. Testing her own poetic boundaries, Dizdarevic juxtaposes private mythologies with war memories of her father to reveal the Balkans as a previously familiar world that now feels foreign and out of reach.”

Uroš Bojanovic, Author of Sam u vodi and Diskretne Hronike

“Dizdarevic’s daring debut collection is a mosaic of personal and collective memory, of the hope of a nation ‘atrophied like muscle,’ of fathers and soldiers. Her poems are howls naming the ‘voices in [the] current [of] waters calloused by bodies.’ Dizdarevic is a poet who is not afraid to turn over the truths that lie face-down in the dirt, cradling the birds that hatch in the darkest parts of us.”

Athena Nassar, Author of Little Houses