„RADOŚĆ WIDNOKRĘGÓW SZEROKICH”. O POEZJI BARBARY GROCHOLSKIEJ-KURKOWIAK / “THE JOY OF WIDE HORIZONS”: THE POETRY OF BARBARA GROCHOLSKA-KURKOWIAK

Abstract

Summary The poetry of Barbara Grocholska-Kurkowiak (born in 1927, a multiple national skiing champion and member of Poland’s Olympic team in the 1950s) is dominated by two themes, the mountains and the nature of common humanity. A characteristic mark of her poems - published in two volumes Pod otwartym niebem (Under Open Skies) and Zawisnąć w locie (To Hover in the Air) in 1999 and 2006 - is an exploration that goes under the surface of things in a persistent search for understanding. It is an understanding of herself and others encased in a poetic record of her deeply personal experiences, the fruit of a contemplative vision sensitive to the sacral dimensions of the world and its inhabitants. She is a poet of few words pressed in tight clusters between emphatic pauses - evocations of silence. No less emphatic are gaps between words that defy contextual propriety or are isolated by semantic fissures between the lines. There seems to be plenty of air in these rugged sentences, which seem to mimic the mountainous terrain with its joy of wide horizons and its promise of communication beyond language, by silence.