He was born in
Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia), to a poor working-class family. Both his parents died in the first year of his life. He spent his childhood with his older sister in the small town of
Velike Lašče. He attended high school in
Cerknica. He enrolled at the
University of Ljubljana, where he studied history of literature, graduating in 1969 under the supervision of the famous literary historian and philosopher
Dušan Pirjevec.
He started publishing poetry already in the 1950s, especially in the literary magazine Sodobnost. In 1982, he was among the founders of the alternative opposition magazine Nova revija. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he served as its chief editor.
Grafenauer started with children's literature, the most famous of which was the collection Pedenjped, about a naughtly, stubborn, clumsy but independent and creative boy. Under the influence of philosophy, especially
Heideggerianism and
hermeneutics, Grafenauer later shifted to reflective poetry. However, his large corpus of children literature is still considered among the best in post-World War II
Slovenian literature.[2]