However, he found life in exile difficult, as did many other émigré Czech writers such as Ivan Diviš.
During his subsequent life in the United Kingdom, he spent time in various mental hospitals, suffering from paranoid fear that StB agents will kidnap him back to Czechoslovakia.
[3] In 2017 a new road on the site of the old St Clements Hospital in Ipswich was named Ivan Blatny Close in memory of the one time resident.
At the beginning of his career, Blatný mostly wrote using conventional rhyming and rhythmic forms such as alexandrine quatrains, most notably in the Brno Elegies (Czech, Melancholické procházky; Prague: Melantrich, 1941).
The poems themselves make no reference whatsoever to contemporary events, but concentrate on Brno and its hinterland, with a beautiful hypnotic lyricism.