He was member of the circle of young Slovene Catholic intellectuals gathered around the Christian left journal Križ na gori.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he emerged as a renowned polemicist, especially directed against the influential left liberal critic Josip Vidmar, with whom he nevertheless maintained a cordial relationship.

His poetics was strongly influenced by late fin-de-siècle symbolism, especially Rilke and Maurice Maeterlinck.

Vodnik was influential as a poet especially during the 1920s, while since the 1930s, his influence started to decline, due to the popularity of social realism and the emergence of a new aesthetic sensibility among young Catholic authors that embraced new objectivity on one hand, and a more mystical tradition on the other.

During the World War II in Yugoslavia Vodnik participated in activities of Osvobodilna fronta.