The Stephen Spender Trust was established in 1997 to promote poetry and translation. In this post Anna Blasiak, poet, translator and literature co-ordinator of the European Literature Network, who wor…
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews HAVING NEVER MET by Inga Pizāne
This is the fifth volume in the Periscope series of translated poetry by the New York-based publisher A Midsummer Night’s Press, following One is None by Kätlin Kaldmaa, Anything Could …
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews GAMES WITH GRETA & OTHER STORIES by Suzana Tratnik
A dense, tense and intense collection of thirteen short stories dealing with heavy issues, from violence, bullying, abuse and cruelty to social exclusion and homophobia, Games with Greta &am…
The Queer Riveter: Outside and Inside – A Conversation Between Two Polish Poets by Maria Jastrzębska and Anna Blasiak
Maria Jastrzębska was born in Poland but arrived in the UK in the 1950s at the age of four. Anna Blasiak arrived in the UK from Poland in 2003, age twenty-nine. Both women are poets, both are queer. I…
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews HYDRA’S HEADS by Nora Gomringer
Reading this book is like walking through an amusement park. Actually no, that would be too artificial, too unreal, while the book is so very real; there is something authentic and sincere about it, s…
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews WHATEVER THE NAME by Pierre Lepori
There is something delicate and extremely fragile about Pierre Lepori’s poetry and about the character(s) he creates. The voice he writes in is hushed – you really need to be free of any distractions …
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews THE GALLOPING HOUR: FRENCH POEMS by Alejandra Pizarnik
This is a very special collection, consisting of Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik’s poems and prose poems written in French during her stay in Paris in the years 1960–1964 and later, back in Buenos A…
#RivetingReviews: Anna Blasiak reviews CARAVAN LULLABIES by Ilzė Butkutė
I keep staring at the titles of Ilzė Butkutė’s two poetry collections – Caravan Lullabies and Carnival Moon – and I’m evermore sure that the alliteration cannot be accidental. The words mirror each ot…
#RivetingReviews: SEVEN STONES by Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Often, without much thought (and quite insensitively), we consider other cultures to be intrinsically different from our own; we imagine our communities as divided from each other by huge crevices tha…
#RivetingReviews: THE GREEN CROW by Kristīne Ulberga
Reading this book is like plunging head-first into deep water. You don’t know what awaits – either in the depths, or even right under the surface. You quickly learn, however, that you should expect an…
#RivetingReviews: THE GREAT PLAN B by Justyna Bargielska
Justyna Bargielska has published eight poetry collections in her native Poland, as well as two fiction books and two children’s books. She has won some of the most prestigious literary prizes in Polan…
Review of Natalia Fiedorczuk’s “Jak pokochać centra handlowe” in Visegrad Insight
Visegrad Insight (issue 1[10] 2017) has published my review of Natalia Fiedorczuk’s Jak pokochać centra handlowe (“How to Fall in Love with Shopping Malls”). Thank you to Julia Sherw…
#RivetingReviews: NIEWAŻKOŚĆ by Julia Fiedorczuk
Julia Fiedorczuk, ELNet’s recent guest at one of our Euro Stars events, is known principally as a poet and a critic who popularised the idea of ecopoetry. She has published five collections of poems i…
British Council First Monday Blog: Polish Literature Across Borders
Poland is Market Focus at The London Book Fair 2017. On this occasion British Council has commissioned a series of blogs and other texts focusing on Polish literature. Today was my turn. I decided to …
10 Books by Polish Women Writers We’d Like to See Translated
Polish books in translation? It takes some effort to find them in bookshops and even more effort to read about them in the review sections of newspapers and magazines, or to find them in public librar…
#RivetingReviews: THE ANGELS DIE by Yasmina Khadra
We meet the protagonist and narrator of Yasmina Khadra’s The Angels Die just before his execution. Turambo is an Algerian Arab living under French colonial rule in the 1920s. He lived in stark poverty…
#RivetingReviews: LULLABY FOR A HANGED MAN by Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki
The Polish writer Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki spent several years in Iceland before moving to his current home of Austria. His Lullaby for a Hanged Man is partly his own story and partly that of two m…
#RivetingReviews: DYGOT by Jakub Małecki
Dygot, by Jakub Małecki, Published in Polish by Sine Qua Non, October 2015, Review by Anna Blasiak Dygot (Tremor) is a miniature saga (just over 300 pages long) about two families from rural Po…
#RivetingReviews: QUIET FLOWS THE UNA by Faruk Šehić
Quiet Flows the Una, by Faruk Šehić, Translated by Will Firth, Published by Istros Books (2016), Reviewed by Anna Blasiak The title of Faruk Šehić’s novel is a reference to the Nobel Prize winn…
Older Articles / Starsze artykuły
Czarne z białym i dużo zieleni. Rozmowa z Peterem Greenawayem Published / opublikowane w: Didaskalia 24/1998 Trzy dekady w górach Published / opublikowane w: Dialog 8/2000 Kostium jako element ‘Ge…