On Thursday, 23 April 2026, the seventh popular science event within the Open Thursday series was held as part of FUZ&JA, the science popularisation project of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek. The Poetry Writing Workshop was led by Matej Gabud, a second-year student of English and Croatian Language and Literature and the author of two poetry collections, Ameba Amebi (Lux Noctis, 2024) and Okopavanje, the latter of which received the 2025 “Na vrh jezika” award and is forthcoming from the publishing house Jesenski i Turk.
In a very relaxed and almost intimate atmosphere, Gabud invited the participants to present their reading and writing habits, with a particular focus on poetry. He then reflected on his own writing process and on the therapeutic value of writing and reading as ways of gaining self-knowledge and developing greater empathy for others. Emphasising the almost magical dimension of delving into one’s inner self and confronting thoughts that we do not allow to surface in everyday rational thinking, Gabud pointed out that this is the key to good poetry – drawing emotion out of oneself and others. Although he says there is no single correct approach to writing poetry and that contemporary pluralism allows for different forms of expression in which everyone can find what suits them best, good poetry cannot be written without honesty towards oneself.
The second part of the workshop consisted of writing a poem based on motifs from Alen Brlek’s collection Pratišina (Fraktura, 2021), while the participants gave the workshop leader motifs on the basis of which he also wrote a poem himself. This was followed by a reading and a joint discussion of the writing process, inspiration and difficulties, during which the participants laughed at their own “struggle” to incorporate two vivid motifs – yellow thread and purple hair. Although initially inclined to distance themselves from their own writing abilities, the participants discovered that they actually found the process enjoyable and, through it, connected their personal experiences with universal human experience.
Although writing, and especially publicly reading poetry, is a very intimate act that leaves us exposed, the workshop participants agreed that it has immeasurable value and wished to share the same message with everyone – read and write!
Jelena Pataki Šumiga, PhD