Formal CV
MARTIN REINER (formerly also PLUHÁČEK), poet, prose writer
and publisher, was born on 1 August 1964 in Brno, but spent part of his
childhood in Janovice nad Úhlavou. He spent six years in army schools and eight
months in a jail. When he was released, he worked as a shop assistant in a shop
with used books, paperboy, stage manager in an operetta theatre; after the
Velvet Revolution he was a co-founder and an editor of the political and
cultural revue Proglas, scholarship holder in ČLF, spokesman for the Ministry
of Culture of the Czech Republic, editor-in-chief of the Lidová demokracie –
Petrov publishing house. Between autumn 1992 and autumn 2005 owner of the
publishing house Petrov. A freelance writer since then.
Other activities:
Organizer of the 1990–1 Škola poezie (School of Poetry) lecture series and the Writers’ Boat (since 1993). In 1993–4 he was the dramaturge, script writer and director of the První čtení (First Reading) cycle of poetry on the stage (works of Brodskij, Blatný, Trakl, Michaux, Bonnefoy) which took place in Malá scéna of Mahen theatre. In 1996 – 2000 he organised (together with Jiří Kuběna) the conventions of Czech, Moravian, and Silesian poets at the Bítov castle. There he presented his literary-theoretical works Neoklasicismus (Neoclassicism, published in literární noviny 36/1998), Princip rýmového karambolu v pozdní lyrice Ivana Blatného (The principle of the rhyme crack-up in the late lyric poetry of Ivan Blatný, publ. in Tvar 16/1999) and Stvořeni sluncem (Created by the Sun, publ. in Tvar 18/2000). Between 2001 and 2004 he organised the international Poezie bez hranic (Poetry without Borders) festival of poetry in Olomouc. He has read from his work at international events in Grenoble, Dresden, Rennes, Prague, Budapest and San Francisco. His poems have been published in English, German, French, Polish, Hungarian and Croatian.
Martin Reiner has published the volumes of poetry Relata refero (1991), Poslední rok (1995), Decimy (1997), Tání chůze (1998), Staré a jiné časy (2002) and Pohled z kavárny v Bath (2007), the novella Lázně (1998), the selection of feuilletons Plachý milionář přichází (2008) and the novel Lucka, Maceška a já (2009). The latest work, selection of poems from the years 2006–2010, has been called Hubená stehna Twiggy (2010). Together with Pavel Šrut and Michal Viewegh he has also published a book for children and adults Tři tatínci a maminka (2010). His work has been included in several anthologies of Czech poetry. The Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series (Ellsworth, USA) published a selection of poems from Staré a jiné časy as Where is the urn? in 2005 and Art Bureau (San Francisco, USA) issued a selection of poems from Pohled z kavárny v Bath as No Through Road in 2007.