ENG Poetry

Polish Poetry 2 Special Supplement, The High Window, Spring 2025

A very subjective selection of new(ish) poetry from Poland, poets whose writing excites me personally so much that I jumped at the opportunity given by The High Window editor, David Cooke, to introduce these poets to the English-language reader. I have on purpose omitted those who have already been translated and published in English, attempting to bring to the fore those who so far had not have much of a chance to inhabit this language. There are some very established poets on my list and some perhaps a bit less-known, but, I would argue, well deserving the attention. And this is by no means an exhaustive list. I struggled whittling it down and still ended up with a list substantially longer than what David had initially suggested. But I thought smaller samples of writing from a larger number of poets might be a better solution here – presenting more diversity of voices, styles and themes.

Poets featured: Mirka Szychowiak • Katarzyna Zwolska-Płusa • Daniel Odija • Joanna Fligiel • Małgorzata Południak • Rafał Gawin • Ka Klakla • Wioletta Ciesielska-Pawlak • Elżbieta Lipińska • Paweł Biliński • Łucja Dudzińska • Joanna Wicherkiewicz • Radosław Wiśniewski • Romana Cegielna-Szczuraszek • Dominika Lewicka-Klucznik • Izabela Fietkiewicz-Paszek

Psalm to Saint Sabina, Radosław Wiśniewski, Trafika Europe 2025

Radosław Wiśniewski is a poet, prose writer and literary critic, co-founder and president of the indie publisher KIT Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów. He published ten volumes of poetry and several prose books. His long poem Psalm to Saint Sabina in Anna Blasiak’s translation recently won the inaugural Trafika Europe’s Andrew Singer Prize for Verse. His poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian.

Czernovitz-Charmovitz, Aneta Kamińska, co-translated with Bohdan Piasecki, Arc Publications 2024

Aneta Kamińska is a Polish poet, author of eight volumes of poetry. She has a wonderful ear for language and her specialty is poetry brimming with linguistic games. She is also a prolific translator of contemporary Ukrainian poets. This chapbook presents a selection of Kamińska’s own poetry from across the years.

Blurb:

Through the fracturing of language, with word and sound-play or othertimes a deceptive simplicity, Kamińska’s poems pull us up short with their visceral honesty. Whether she is writing about the female body, a Jewish cemetery, the pandemic or the invasion of Ukraine, her poems are at once fierce and intimate. She is a unique voice which cannot be ignored, its freshness and immediacy discovered and relayed to us in ingenious ways by her translators.

Maria Jastrzębska

BezTroska. Próby Wyrazu / Mis-Concern. Attempts at Expression, Łucja Dudzińska, FONT 2024

Home. Structure on Trial, Rafał Gawin, [in:] Home on the Move. Two poems go on a journey, ed. Manuela Petregella i Ricarda Vidal, Parthian Books, 2019

Home on the Move explores notions of ‘home’ that are challenged and reshaped by unprecedented migration. The anthology interrogates ideas of home, belonging and language from poetic perspectives. The creative responses are the results of a journey undertaken by two poems about`home: TS Eliot Prize – shortlisted poet Deryn Rees-Jones’ poem ‘HOME’ who travelled from the UK via France to Spain and back and Polish poet Rafal Gawin’s poem: `DOM. KONSTRUKCJA W PROCESIE SADOWYM (`Home. Structure on Trial). Gawin travelled to the UK via Romania and back to Poland and the poem reflects the inspiration of these places. During each journey, the poems were translated by a literary translator and a local film artist.