Životopis

From Sopje to Valpovo

Ivan Benak was born on July 29, 1933 in Sopje, a village by the Drava river in the Slavonian Podravina. He finished primary school there and went on to the agricultural secondary school in Slatina. Later he also qualified as a highly skilled professional driver.

From 1956 he lived in Valpovo, where for thirty-six years, until he retired, he worked at the health centre as an ambulance driver. In Valpovo he and his wife Jelka (1931–2020) raised two children and lived to see grandchildren, for whom he wrote many poems. In 2010 he wrote of fifty-seven years of marriage: “My wife has been good and true, / and she gave me children two.”

His hard childhood in Ritska Ada and his road to Valpovo are told by his daughter, Suzana Vida, in The Life of Ivan Benak.

A poet who writes rhymes

He wrote from early youth. One of his first poems, Don't Wake Me Early, Mother, he wrote as a young man, around 1950, and almost four decades later, set to music, it was performed at the Split Festival. For decades his poems appeared in workers' newspapers, magazines, reviews and bulletins, and he read them at the theatre in Belišće and on Radio Valpovština.

He published his first book, Little Dreams, in 1988, at the age of fifty-five. It was followed by Bunny's Luck (1990), The Valpovo Bećarac (1993), Echoes of the Heart (2001), The Frogs' Meeting (2005) and Through Life in Verse (2010). His work is rich and varied, from love poems and patriotic verse to protest and humorous poems, but critics agreed that he was at his best as a poet for children. Children still learn his poems by heart.

By the count in his last biography, fourteen of his poems were set to music, among them the anthems of the municipalities of Petrijevci and Marijanci and the anthem of the Maza kindergarten in Valpovo. He was an associate member of the Croatian Composers' Society, and he reviewed some fifteen books by other poets.

Poeta and the poetry evenings

In 1992 he founded the Poeta society of poetry writers in Valpovo, which still exists as the poetry section of the Valpovo 1905 cultural society, and he was its first president. In 1993, together with the society, he established the Folk Poets' Evening (Sijelo pučkih pjesnika) of the Valpovo region. From 2000 to 2005 he ran the poetry evening in Bocanjevci, and in 2005 he started the Children's Poetry Festival at the SOS Children's Village in Ladimirevci.

He was a regular guest at poetry evenings and gatherings all over Slavonia, with fifty to eighty readings a year. He visited kindergartens, schools, old people's homes, pensioners' associations, churches, folk-culture societies, radio and television. In 2008 and 2009 alone he gave 106 readings. His fellow poets called him “a legend of Slavonian poetry”.

Honours

For his work he received more than a hundred and fifty awards, certificates of thanks and diplomas. The one he treasured most was the diploma of the Valpovo 1905 society for promoting culture in the Valpovo region.

Chronology

1933 — born on July 29 in Sopje

1951 — meets his future wife, Jelka, in Belišće

1956 — moves to Valpovo, where he drives an ambulance for thirty-six years

1987 — meets the poet Luka Jokić in Vinkovci, the start of a long friendship

1988 — first book, “Little Dreams” (Vinkovci)

1989 — “Don't Wake Me Early, Mother” at the Split Festival (Ivo Pattiera and Zlatni dukati)

1990 — “Bunny's Luck”

1992 — founds the Poeta society in Valpovo

1993 — “The Valpovo Bećarac”; establishes the Folk Poets' Evening of the Valpovo region; “Green Are Those Eyes of Yours” in Požega

1994 — “Beneath the Lilac Boughs” at the Zlatne žice Slavonije festival

2001 — “Echoes of the Heart”

2005 — “The Frogs' Meeting”; starts the Children's Poetry Festival at the SOS Children's Village in Ladimirevci

2010 — his sixth book, “Through Life in Verse”

2011 — plaque of the Municipality of Sopje

2012 — nominated for the Central European Encyclopaedia of Literature; award of the European Year of Active Ageing; nominated as Senior of the Year, “Young at Heart”; December 3: the Gold Plaque “Seal of the Town of Valpovo” for his life's work

2015 — last dated poem, “Now St Vincent's Day Has Come” (January 22); dies in Valpovo on May 11

— — plaques of the municipalities of Petrijevci and Marijanci for their anthems

Last years

He went on writing and reading until the end of his life. “Now the days of age are here, / and my health is not the same, / yet my heart, as proud as ever, / age has never learned to tame.”

Ivan Benak died in Valpovo on May 11, 2015, in his eighty-second year. He is buried in the Valpovo cemetery (map of the grave).

Back in 1983 he wrote The Poet's Wish: “Some day, when I've gone / to the bliss of heaven, / now and then, come round, / visit where I lie. / With a white carnation / grace my mound below.”