"... In places the poet folds the languages into and through each other to emphasise resonances, echoes and play. Sounds that are similar might suggest an easy step from one linguistic zone to another, and more disruptive shifts will remind us of the disjuncture or rupture in moving between homes or language worlds, the 'exiled tongues', 'a migrant memory – / I call it the "boss scar" – (13)." (Mark Leahy, 'this isn't a palimpsest about loss', review of Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues, Stride magazine)
                                                
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"This [Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues] is a fascinating book, full of dislocation and loss, and yet also resonant with a sense of a past being rediscovered". (Simon Collings, Tears in the Fence)
                                                                     
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"Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani brilliantly raises the old sword of the bard battling both the silences within herself and which plague us all – the ‘mutisms’ at the ‘edges’, our own wilderness being contained". (Jennifer K. Dick, author of, most recently, That Which I Touch Has No Name (2022))

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Shaped from three very different languages and cultures the poems of Knitting Drum Machines for exiled tongues shimmer with the interwoven colours of saying and the fragile materialities of silence and of loss. (Lyndon Davies) 

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In fine, « Knitting drum machines for exiled tongues » évoque l’image d’un patchwork de langues, de bruits et de sonorités qui, dans leur entrelacement, donnent forme à la musicalité du monde entier. Le titre nous donne la preuve du fait qu’en reconnaissant notre passé, une fois que l’on a accepté le caractère inévitable de son existence comme facteur constitutif de notre mémoire (événement exprimé par Jasmina avec la succession immédiate d’une négation après une affirmation : « what is human & what is not »), on s’affranchit de l’angoisse nous empêchant de nous éloigner de nous-mêmes dans le but d’obtenir une perspective inédite de notre sphère identitaire (Silvia La Bruna, CICLIM). 

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Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani's work is an ambitious combination of French, English and Croatian language elements, further enriched and elaborated by diverse open forms and the incorporation of visual components such as maps and photos. (Oliver Dixon, Sonic Bricolage, PN Review 274).

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"With its startling imagery, fluid exploration of form and  multi-lingual approach to poetry, Reveries About Language is a quest into a poet’s own heart of darkness through which the colour and light of new realizations and thought-provoking ideas are refracted. At times gentle, in others brutal, it can be read as both a love letter and written warning that marks the ways language can propel an individual across the barriers of identity, time and space, and raises a question about how far each of us is at the mercy of words. A refreshingly unapologetic book from a striking new voice.” (Helen Cox, Poetrygram).“

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“A breath of fresh air!”  

“Speaking as a mono-linguist I particularly enjoyed hearing the cadences and the rhythms of the French and Croatian language poetry.  Fascinating and surprising.”

“Real food for thought regarding belonging and identity, and ways of weaving different languages together.  At a time when many are feeling down about Brexit, and an ‘isolationist mentality’, a real tonic to be among people who clearly love to explore and express themselves in different languages. It lifted my spirits!”

“Le monde semblait à nouveau ouvert durant les « rêveries autour de la langue » partagées ce soir…”

“Jasminine pjesme su krasne, cak i kad slušam francuski koji ne razumijem, nekako dolaze riječi do srca. Sve u svemu ne samo da je bilo lijepo, nego i zabavno! Hvala još jednom!”

(“Reveries about language” online poetry reading, 11 December 2020. (With: Delphine Salkin, Isabelle Dumont, Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani. Host:  David Caddy).