Sova loví noc

Vladimír Šrámek

A retrospective collection of poems by Vladimír Šrámek. Turning fifty, he tries to walk a rotten tightrope from the peat bog of the present towards the future.

Vladimír Šrámek (born 1958) is an anaesthesiologist, long‑time former Head of the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care at St Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, as well as a poet and author of non‑fiction. In both his medical and literary work, he focuses on intensive, palliative, and geriatric care, consistently connecting clinical experience with a literary and ethical reflection on human vulnerability.

Cardiac output is the basic metric of blood flow performance – it describes the volume of blood being pumped by the heart, in particular by the left or right ventricle, per unit time. The figurative sense is needless to explain. It can only be added that the time unit is one human life.

The Cardiac Output series published fourteen titles of contemporary Czech poetry in collaboration with Masaryk University Press by the end of 2013. Vladimír Šrámek served as editor, and Leoš Knotek was responsible for the layout design. A number of poets, mainly based in Brno, were involved in the editorial work. In 2013, Cardiac Output was transformed into a voluntary group with the aim of reviving publishing activities as well as other cultural initiatives.