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Ru\u017ea Dabi\u0107-Bu\u010dak<\/strong> was born in Croatia in 1950. She spent her childhood and youth in her beloved \u017dupanja, in the Kolonija-\u0160e\u0107erana neighborhood. In 1969, she graduated from the School of Nursing in Vinkovci, and in 1971, she and her husband moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she still lives today. She is the proud mother of two children and grandmother of three.<\/p>\n Ru\u017ea dedicated her professional life to working as a nurse counselor at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre, part of Austin Hospital in Melbourne.<\/p>\n She discovered her passion for poetry later in life, just two days before her 60th birthday. She writes in both Croatian and English. In 2021, she published her first book of poetry in Croatian, Latice<\/em> (Petals<\/em>), which was intentionally left unedited to document the evolution of the Croatian language in someone who was educated in Croatia during the 1950s and 1960s and lived in Australia for over fifty years. Her following three books were published by a professional publisher.<\/p>\n Her collections Kapljice<\/em> (Droplets<\/em>) and Petals<\/em> proudly reside in the local heritage section of the \u017dupanja City Library.<\/p>\n Ru\u017ea says: “My children speak Croatian, but they found it difficult to fully grasp the spirit of poetry written in Croatian. My grandchildren, on the other hand, don’t speak Croatian at all. That’s why I wrote Petals<\/em> and Currents of Air & Age<\/em> in English, so that they\u2014and future generations\u2014will always know where they come from. Writing is not only a need for me; it brings me joy and fulfillment. Life itself is my greatest inspiration. Much of my work is autobiographical, while the rest reflects my feelings and thoughts. Many of my poems are dedicated to my old homeland, to \u017dupanja, to my mother Slavonia, to our blue Adriatic, to the life and traditions of days gone by, and to the people who made them special. Every poem is a droplet of my life. I believe that by capturing them in books, they will not be lost nor forgotten.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ru\u017ea Dabi\u0107-Bu\u010dak was born in Croatia in 1950. She spent her childhood and youth in her beloved \u017dupanja, in the Kolonija-\u0160e\u0107erana neighborhood. In 1969, she graduated from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia"],"yoast_head":"\n