"When we were at school, there were always academies to commemorate the anniversary of the October Revolution, the Victorious February and so on. Mother's Day, International Women's Day... And I recited a poem there once by Jan Noha, who was a famous poet. And he was sitting in the audience. When I recited the poem, he came up to me and took my hands and said, 'You have such a beautiful presentation. Tell your mother it would be good for you to study acting. You were born to do it.' I came home, told my mother. And I got slapped on both sides: 'Don´t be silly, we don't have the money!'"
"As the academies were, as I said, we used to recite there. And I used to recite, I mean, I used to say some prose. Ivan heard me and came to me and said, 'Wait, wait, come here. You recited this poem; I don’t know it.’ I said, 'Ivan, that wasn't a poem, that was prose.' And he was thinking that I would fool him too. Anyway. And then there were others, and he was waiting for me to say what I was going to recite today. So that's how I got to the poet Ivan Martin Jirous through reciting poems."
"He wore all black, a black turtleneck, coat, corduroy trousers, and underneath he wore a Youth Union shirt. And when the teacher said, 'Ivan, you might as well... you're sitting here like this,' and he took off his clothes and he had the union shirt on. Now everybody started laughing, and he stood up and said, 'I'm a joke to you, I'm not.' So he got them again the other way round."
"J. R - N.
The autumn swans are dropping their feathers,
fewer and fewer believe.
The workers sit fried by the hearth,
They serve each other a badly fried swan bone.
Even vegetarians no longer eat tough swan meat.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Hynek, my swan.
Hynek, my lute.
Jarmila!"
Jarmila Neomytková was born on 20 December 1945 in Sereď, Slovakia. Her parents came from the Czech Republic. She completed the first seven grades in Slovakia and at the age of 14 she moved to Humpolec with her mother and siblings. There she finished primary school and entered secondary medical school. At that time, she participated in cultural academies where she recited poetry and prose. There she met Ivan Martin Jirous and they established a close relationship. In her adolescence, thanks to Jirous’ influence, she read samizdat and moved in Humpole cultural circles. She married in 1965, later had two children and worked almost all her life in the Humpole hospital. She met Ivan Martin Jirous again after the revolution. She became the editor of the commemorative book “Nutter from Humpolec”. In 2025 she lived in Jiřice.
