Contemporary Polish Poetry Research Articles

“HOW CAN IT (NOT) DELIGHT?” – THE BLIGHTS AND DELIGHTS OF POLISH POETRY. A SMALL STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY CASES AND RECOGNITIONS

The article is an attempt at presenting a small panorama of reflections on the category of delight-enchantment as a poetic impulse and as a theme in selected Polish poems from the turn of the 20th century to the year 2022. It starts from a discussion of the need for delight in contemporary literature. Apart from exemplifications, illustrations and observations on the subject of poetic enchantment in contemporary Polish poetry and the paths leading to it, the author proposes here to examine various poetics and conditions enabling delight to appear or to be absent in contemporary poetry.

Pisanie szeptem? O najnowszej polskiej poezji lesbijskiej

This article is an attempt to reconstruct the history of Polish lesbian poetry since the 1990s. The author analyzes the work of poets who introduced themes of female non-heteronormativity into Polish poetry at the turn of the millennium. The poems of Ewa Sonnenberg, Inga Iwasiów and Izabela Filipiak (Morska), being examples of different ways of writing about the lesbian experience, became a contribution to the reflection on queer representation in culture and literature in recent years. In the context of the interdisciplinarity of lesbian poetry, the article tries to outline its presence in independent literary life, citing examples of films, zines and slam poetry. It also points out recent books of poetry and female authors who have become representatives of recent Polish lesbian poetry. Keywords: poetry, Polish poetry, contemporary Polish poetry, lesbian poetry, queer literature, queer, non-heteronormativity, feminism, female non-heteronormativity

A Mixed-Waste Bin: Recycling in Contemporary Polish Poetry

The article presents the phenomenon of linguistic and poetic recycling in recent Polish poetry.It has to do with creative uses of non-literary forms of language. Three types of such linguistic materialscan be distinguished: ready-mades, materials and waste. Ready-mades are extensive formsof non-literary language transplanted into the poem. Materials are short passages refl ecting non--artistic forms of expression and woven into a poem. Wastes are reused words or their fragmentsscattered in a poem and not forming a coherent utterance. The aim of such experiments is to criticallyanalyze language in general and to renew the language of literature.

Dzienniki (Diaries) of Jarosław Leon Iwaszkiewicz: World War II (1939–1945) in the writer’s individual perception

The article aims to characterize a topical issue through poetics: the Second World War from the perspective of J. Iwaszkiewicz’s individual perception from September 2, 1939, when the Luftwaffe began to bomb Warsaw until the moment of its liberation on January 18, 1945. It is noted that the writer recorded on the pages of his diary not only his psychological state but also that of other people. Particular attention is paid to the first entry of August 12, 1939, where the breakdown of the peaceful life was recorded, during which the writer had been immersed in the problems of art, intending to create a free-form work, a kind of ANNABEL, where the images of the composer Karol Szymanowski, the poets J. Tuwim and S. Witkiewicz would have appeared. The article focuses on the entry of August 28, 1939, which tells about the writer’s deep love for Ukraine and his nostalgic memories of it. The study emphasizes the historical value of almost daily records dedicated to mobilization, dated August 24 and 31, and those testimonies contained in the diary entries from September 4, 5 and 6, which describe the terrible pictures of people fleeing from Podkowa and the state of the road to it, destroyed by bombing. The entry about a terrible entrance to Warsaw, dated September 7, and that with a group portrait of crowds on the roads, dated September 8, are considered from the point of view of artistic skill. The article studies the poetics of tragic scenes of Warsaw residents’ escape and analyzes the entries depicting the underground cultural life of the capital, the secret academy dedicated to K. Szymanowski’s death anniversary, the series of J. Iwaszkiewicz’s lectures about contemporary Polish poetry, Stawisko, where the writer hid writers, artists and fighters against the invaders, about the Uprising and post-war reconstruction. Attention is also given to the recollection of K. Baczynski and W. Draczynska’s marriage.

Night Truck Driver / Kierowca nocnej ciężarówki

Night Truck Driver / Kierowca nocnej ciężarówki

Na styku mediów, na styku technik. „Foto-grafia” klasyczna i cyfrowa w polskiej poezji najnowszej

The aim of this text is to present the literary image of the breakthrough that occurred with the invention of digital photography. The article focuses on the most contemporary Polish poetry – mainly authors born in the 70s, such as Jacek Dehnel, Marcin Świetlicki or Bronka Nowicka. On the basis of their texts, the literary image of both traditional analog photography and photos created with the use of the latest techniques is reconstructed. In her interpretations, the author uses the tools she has developed herself, which include concepts such as “photo-graphemicality”, which is a combination of features linking text with photography, and “photo-grapheme”, which is its individual realisation.

Baroque Tradition in the Poetry of Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki. Reconnaissance

Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn Dycki (born 1964) belongs to the group of poets whose work has been awarded many times in prestigious literary competitions; the poet received, among others, The Nike Literary Award (2009), the Gdynia Literary Award (twice: in 2006 and 2009) and the SilesiusWrocław Poetry Award (twice: in 2012 and 2020). His poetry has been systematically elaborated on the themes of madness, disease and the obsession with death. When writing about death Dycki refers to the baroque tradition. Therefore, the aim of this article is an attempt to interpret the works of Tkaczyszyn-Dycki in the context of questions about the Baroque tradition and its various continuationsin contemporary Polish poetry. Dycki certainly refers to the Baroque (or more broadly the Old Polish tradition), but this Baroque undergoes a far-reaching metamorphosis. It is an obscure, non-obvious Baroque, functioning rather as a specter haunting the language, through which Dyckifights for his own speech, still watching death.

Contributors

Contributors

Krytyka ekofeministyczna a katastrofa klimatyczna. Narracje o kryzysie w nareszcie możemy się zjadać Moniki Lubińskiej

The aim of this study was to introduce and discuss ecofeminist literary criticism and its philosophical background rooted in works of ecofeminist researchers such as Val Plumwood and Ariel Salleh. As intersectional theory, ecofeminism provides a profound analysis of the conceptual connection between women and nature. Ecological feminism is also concerned with relations between various forms of discrimination — racism, sexism, heterosexism and speciesism. Ecofeminist criticism is believed to be a method of reading that provides an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between subject, literature and environment. It examines issues such as carnality and sexuality which are also viewed as significant motifs in contemporary Polish poetry, e.g. in the works of Monika Lubinska. Research that combines literature studies and ecological themes seem to be particularly important in the second decade of 21st century — a time increasingly associated with climate crisis. The ecofeminist approach was used to analyze nareszcie mozemy sie zjadac, a debut book of poetry written by Polish author Monika Lubinska. The existence of garbage, activism issues and femininity were among the topics examined. Special attention was paid to Lubinska’s juxtapositions of sensuality and technology and to her writing method which involves the use of recycled phrases from Internet search engines, Wikipedia and her smartphone’s dictionary. The study revealed that the ecological sensibility of Monika Lubinska is deeply intertwined with her feminist awareness.

Wspólnota rozszerzona

This article is a discussion of Anita Jarzyna’s book Post-koine. Studia o nieantropocentrycznych językach (poetyckich) [Post-koine. Studies of non-anthropocentric (poetic) languages] (2019), which analyses non-anthropocentric narratives in contemporary Polish poetry. The reviewer introduces the problematics of the monograph and notices the non-obvious choice of works interpreted by Jarzyna, who is primarily interested in glimpses of the non-anthropocentric perspective in authors not associated with the ecocritical writing. Taking into account various interpretative contexts, the author presents a wide spectrum of issues from the field of animal studies, and she also argues that poetry is both a reflection and a harbinger of changes that are taking place in the collective imagination.

Contemporary Polish poetry for children

This article mainly deals with the history of the contemporary Polish poetry for children (end of XX century — beginning of XXI). The author shows how contemporary children’s poetry is linked with the traditional one (and also some folklore forms), characterizes the creative styles of several contemporary poets (J. Twardowski, Z. Beszczyńska, J. Kulmowa, W. Oszajca), and points out several breaks from the tradition. The author names two main streams in children’s contemporary poetry as “Lyric poetry” and “Playing with words”, and speaks in detail of their creative approaches and readers’ pragmatics. Especially interesting is the comparison of contemporary children’s poetry samples and the classical ones (Jan Brzechwa, Janina Porazińska, Maria Konopnicka, Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina, Julian Tuwim), and also linking with the tradition of religious and ritual poetry. The authors looks at contemporary poetry for children from diacena have taken place.

Jakieś dziwne przeczucie, jak przed świata końcem. Argumenty za nową cezurą

A Weird Inkling, As If the World Was Ending. Arguments for a New Periodisation The article examines the idea of year 2008 – the beginning of the so-called Great Recession – as a potential turning point in contemporary Polish poetry. Most of the authors commonly associated with the so-called “new Polish political poetry” have published their first books around 2008, and it was also around that year that the work of certain important young authors seems to have shifted from a relatively traditional form to a more experimental one, allowing them to accurately grasp the anxiety and precariousness inherently tied to the social experience of the young generation. I link these shifts to the issue of reference and dereferentialisation of sign/language under financial capitalism. Whereas pre-2008, the dereferentialisation of language might have seemed like an ongoing and somewhat ambivalent process, for the young generation it constitutes the very foundation of their everyday existence.

Komunikacja literacka wobec społeczeństwa sieci. Przykłady w najmłodszej polskiej poezji

Literary Communication and the Network Society. Examples in Recent Polish Poetry This article outlines the impact of changes in social structures on literary communication in contemporary Polish poetry. The author, using tools borrowed from sociology (Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and Manuel Castells’s concept of network society), analyzes the communication structures in poetry published after 2012. Among the quoted and interpreted poetic books are Pamięć zewnętrzna by Radosław Jurczak, Animalia by Anna Adamowicz, Pamiętne statusy by Łukasz Podgórni, HWDP jako miejsce na ziemi by Tomasz Pułk, and Wiersze organiczne by Kacper Bartczak.

Od tłumacza do poety i z powrotem. Twórczość przekładowa Adama Ważyka jako część literatury polskiej

From Translator to Poet and Back: Adam Ważyk’s Translation Output as Part of Polish Literature The article offers an analysis of Adam Ważyk’s translation work, particularly in the context of its influence on the shaping of contemporary Polish poetry. The author aims to showcase the impact of Ważyk’s translations on some of the recent developments within Polish literature; to this end, she employs the distinction between translatoras-envoy and translator-as-lawmaker, as proposed by Jerzy Jarniewicz. Ważyk is here seen as an example of a “lawmaker”, and compared to Piotr Sommer – another author influential within a similar audience. The author argues that in his original choice of what to translate, Ważyk was driven by a desire to project onto the Polish context – to reproduce in his native language – a set of poetic and social circumstances associated with the French avant-garde movement; finally it served the goal of making Ważyk’s own work more comprehensible to his Polish readers. At the turn of the 21st century a group of Polish poets who had expressed interest in Ważyk were also attracted to the work of poets translated by Ważyk; the influence of these foreign authors was thus mediated by Ważyk’s own work.

Aquatic Motifs in the Perspective of Christian Theology in the Poetry of Wojciech Kudyba

This article discusses the strategies of using aquatic motifs as evocations of Christian thought. Such imagery of water, rivers or streams has a deeper meaning, allowing an interpretation focused on theological refl ection about the setting of the poems. The analysis will be based on two poems by Wojciech Kudyba: Kowaniec and Dunajec, as well as their translations into English: The Dunajec River and The Kowaniec Stream, published in the anthology City of Memory. A bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Polish Poetry, edited and translated by Michael J. Mikoś with an introduction by Andrzej Niewiadomski. This anthology includes translations of many important contemporary authors, such as Wojciech Bonowicz, Przemysław Dakowicz, Krzysztof Koehler, Marcin Świetlicki and Tomasz Różycki.

Od-zdarzanie się zdarzeń. (O liryce Stanisława Czerniaka)

The article discusses philosophical poems by Stanisław Czerniak published in recent years, where a perceivably intensified motif has been the criticism of contem-porary culture more and more dependent on the Internet-based virtual worlds. The accuracy of the said criticism is pointed out, for it reveals the superficial and illusionary character of individual identity built upon those worlds. A lot of space is devoted in the article to the analysis of sophisticated “word plays”, characteristic for Czerniak’s works, imbuing it with a character that remains exceptional, distinctively individual in contemporary Polish poetry.

City of Memory: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Polish Poetry

City of Memory: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Polish Poetry

In search of a reaffirmation of one’s own poetic voice through translation: contemporary Polish poetry translated into Spanish

The aim of this paper is to show the possible difficulties which might be encountered by the translators who resolve to recreate in the target texts the images related to the reality depicted in the recent Polish poets, such as Marcin Świetlicki, Ewa Sonnenberg, Michał Sobol and Jacek Dehnel. It is an artistic manifestation practically unknown to the Spanish-language reader, so the purpose of our study is also to create the possibility of familiarizing with the poetry that has been published in Poland during the last years. It is proposed to make a comparative analysis between the original verses and the Spanish versions to find out if the stylistic and formal organization of the works from which emerges “the adoption of paths of creative freedom and fidelity to one’s own voice” (Antonio Colinas) by their authors has been preserved in the target texts. When thinking about the specificity of this poetry and the way of revealing it in the translation process, it is used the idea of the translation of lyric texts as a recontextualisation of the original verses in another language put forward by Lawrence Venuti. We also take into account the observations of Antoine Berman and his concept of translation as “the trial of the foreign” to verify if and to what extent the solutions adopted by the translators have distanced the target recipient from the qualities of the original and sometimes distant reality. Finally, and thinking about the recreational aspect of the translation process, we also focus on the notion of “serial thought” described by Umberto Eco and its use in the field of translation. The presented examples sketch the Hispanic reception of the latest Polish poetry and indicate that its aesthetic inten-tionality reflected in the analyzed translations may be a part of the target literary tradition.

Okruchy biblijne Jerzego Ficowskiego

Jerzy Ficowski’s biblical fragments The article is a general and panoramic attempt at defining the basic forms of the presence of Bible in Jerzy Ficowski’s poetry. It was estblished that biblical themes are not central elements of the poetic world of the author of Inicjał. Nevertheless, they are constantly present throughout his works. The poet most often refers to the Old Testament. In particular, Ficowski is almost obsessively focused on the motif of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and original sin. The theme is present in a number of poems written during the period of a couple decades. Those poems are the subject of a more detailed analysis and interpretation of the present article.Key words: Jerzy Ficowski; contemporary Polish poetry; biblical inspirations in literature;

Odnajdując „wspólny język ognia”: Jerzy Ficowski wobec mistycyzmu żydowskiego (prolegomena)

Finding the “common language of fire”: Jerzy Ficowski on Jewish mysticism (prolegomena) This article is an attempt to outline the relationship between the work of Jerzy Ficowski and the Jewish mystical thought that was brought in this paper to a kabbalistic element – a synthesis of components considered basic for two great currents of the non-orthodox Judaism: Kabbalah and Hasidism. At the level of content they consist of the motifs of the Book, Word and Letter, Angels and Light, the messianic topos of the Just, cosmogonic and eschatological myths, as well as specific, non-linear recognition of time – which are strongly present in the poetry of the author of the Regions of the Great Heresy. At the level of structure there are noticeable the emanation model and the duality of language and imagination, of matter and spirituality – diametrically different elements, yet gravitating toward the ultimate unity. The text, containing references to translation and “Schulzian” output of Jerzy Ficowski, is focused on his poetry and is an introduction to its aspectual monograph.Key words: contemporary Polish poetry; Jerzy Ficowski; Jewish mysticism; Kabbalah; Hasidism;