Marinko Stevanović
Marinko Bunić (née Stevanović) (May 23, 1961) is a Yugoslav writer. He was born in the village of Liješanj near Zvornik, now he lives in Vienna, Austria since 1992. He attended schools in Drinjača (primary school) and Gymnasium (secondary school ) in Zvornik. Then he studied astronomy at the University of Belgrade 1981-1984. He switched his interest to pedagogy and graduated at the Pedagogical Academy, University of Tuzla 1987 which gained him a right to work as a primary school teacher. Marinko has been writing poems since 1976 in the opus „Provincijski razgovori“ (Provincial conversations). He never publishes  his poems as a collection of poems in a printed form, only within a free online Magnum opus Provincijski razgovori (Provincial conversations). Opus consists of three parts: Provincijski razgovori (Provincial conversations); U svijetu prašine (In the world of dust) and Urbani razgovori (Urban conversations). His poems have a humanistic and antiwar character, with an antipatriotic connotation. His poems have been translated into English, Dutch and German. He also writes in German. His poetry reflects on the burning problems of society as well as his own philosophy of life and a meaning. „Participants“ of the conversations (as author calls them) are  the Teacher (Učitelj), the Preacher (Propovijednik), the Poet (Pjesnik), the Philosopher (filozof), the Ordinary Optimist (Obični Optimista), the Ordinary Pessimist (Obični Pesimista), the Ironic Pessimist (Ironični Pesimista) and the Ironic Optimist (Ironični Optimista). Those participants reflect authors' capability to transform his view of the world through seemingly different personalities and attitudes. Marinkos' poetry summarizes many aspects of life – from daily motives of love, emotional plays and love for life, to a high critique of hot society topics. It's very clear that an author with his social critique goes out of the frames of a national or any other conservative  belief and does an unbiased perspective of Balkans with, often, satirical elements and a firm structure. His style is vivid, his messages have a social value and together they represent a compact philosophical approach of author. Marinko also wrote many poems inspired by his pupils while he worked as a teacher. His Urban conversations are distinctive from Provincial conversations when comparing the style as well as the overall atmosphere in the poems. These differences profoundly, still subtly, indicate the basic conflict between a province and urbanity, between our instinctive simplicity and achieved complex abstraction.