Vasko Popa (1922–1991) was born in the Banat district of Yugoslavia. During World War II he fought with a partisan group; afterwards he studied in Vienna and Bucharest before completing his education at the University of Belgrade. He was elected to the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and to the Parisian Académie Mallarmé in 1977. He visited Britain on several occasions, attending the London Poetry International and Cambridge Poetry Festivals. He was widely regarded not only as the greatest poet of the Serbo-Croat language but as a poet of towering European stature. He lived in Belgrade where he worked as an editor for the publishers Nolit from 1954 until 1979.