Background
Minatti was born in 1924 in Slovenske Konjice in the eastern Slovenia.
Minatti was born in 1924 in Slovenske Konjice in the eastern Slovenia.
He attended grammar school in the city, finished it in 1943, and then started medical studies, but postponed them to join the Partisans in 1944. After the war, he studied Slavic studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana and graduated in 1952.
He started writing poetry before the World World War II, but principally belongs to the first post-war generation of Slovene poets. He is one of the best representatives of Slovene Intimism. His family moved first to Slovenj Gradec and then to Ljubljana while he was still a child.
He worked as an editor at Mladinska Knjiga publishers from 1947 until his retirement in 1984.
He died at the age of 88 years and was buried at Žale in Ljubljana.
Minatti won the Prešeren Fund Award in 1964 for his poetry collection You Have to Love Somebody (Slovene: Nekoga moraš imeti rad). In 1972, he won the Sovre Award, bestowed to best translations to Slovene, for his translations of lyrical poems of the Macedonian poet Kočo Racin and the Bosnian poet Izet Sarajlić. In 1985, he won the Prešeren Award for his poetry collection I Listen to the Silence Inside Maine (Prisluškujem tišini v sebi).
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts]
He became a regular member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1991.
