Adem Garić

Adem Garić was born in 1986 in Doboj, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He grew up in the village of Piljužići near Tešanj, where he completed his elementary school education. He entered the Gazi-Husrev-Bey Madrasah in Sarajevo in 2001 and graduated from it by the end of 2005. In 2006, he was admitted to the School of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarajevo, earning his Bachelor’s degree in Islamic theology in 2011. He has been living in Erie, Pennsylvania since 2017, working in the position of an Imam for the congegration of the Bosniak Islamic community.

His poetry has been published in literary magazines Život, Preporod, Strane, Eckermann, High Shelves Poetry Magazine, Snowbear Family Circus, Poetry Magazine, Pointed Circle Poetry Magazine, and others. Likewise, on online portals such as Strane.ba, Tacno.net, and Miljenko Jergović’ s Ajfelov Most. In 2016, he won the second prize at Mak Dizdar Literary Award Competition in Stolac for his nascient poetry manuscript Jesenja sintaksa (An Autumn Syntax). In 2016, he published a poetry collection Otići u Švedsku (Leaving for Sweden) with the Lijepa riječ publishing house from Konjic, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

His poetry collection, Selidbe (Relocations), is his second independent poetic achievement. To be an Imam/poet – or to be a poet/Imam – is the question he has been facing, both individually as well as by his readership still needing to get to know him or peruse his work. He is married to Merjem (née Gabela) Garić, originally from Herzegovina. The two of them treasure their daughter, Imany.

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