Zuzanna Bartoszek
Jerzy Jarniewicz
Małgorzata Lebda
Krzysztof Siwczyk
Dariusz Sośnicki

Zuzanna Bartoszek

Zuzanna Bartoszek (b. 1993, Poznań). Poet and artist. Her poems have been published in Twórczość, Mały Format, Wizja, Dwutygodnik, Lampa, Czas Kultury, Fabularia, and by Biuro Literackie. Her debut collection of poems, Niebieski dwór, came out in 2016. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Kunsthalle in Zurich, Cell Project Space in London, Kevin Space in Vienna, the Arsenic in Lausanne, Galerie Pina in Vienna, and the Serce Człowieka Gallery in Warsaw. She lives and works in Warsaw.

Fot. Lola Banet

About the book:

This is a very interesting young voice that always uses a balanced phrase, very clear, in order to convey the paradoxical nature of life while retaining the shaky equilibrium between the two opposite attitudes: affirmation, acceptance of the world against all odds, and objection, protesting contrary to beauty and joy. It is this shaky equilibrium that always hangs in the balance.

Andrea Ceccherelli, member of the Wisława Szymborska Award Committee

Zuzanna Bartoszek’s phrase is calm, complete, which, however, does not mean that her poetry is free of emotion. Quite the contrary: each poem describes profound experiences, each – even the smallest – treating them as something not brought on by chance. The immersion in the quotidian (sleep, responsibilities, relationships, and fears) is at the same time an immersion in a world comprehended in a variety of ways: the lyrical subject’s days are filled with work and fatigue, just like the days of all the people she encounters and observes, while the sky into which she often looks – watching the glaring sun, which is synonymous with life, and the moon, which lights up the moments of withdrawal and closure – is also the material frame of reference for the whole globe. The world is not enough for Bartoszek, so the poet invites us to the fringe of the poem and into virtual experiments on imaginary objects. The gazes, however, are hers and hers only, which is decisive for the unusual character of this large volume: deeply private and intimate, filled with memories, revisits, and dreams, but at the same time diligently recording the reality that always unfolds in relationships: with herself, with people, with the world, and with pain.

Jerzy Jarniewicz

Jerzy Jarniewicz (b. 1958) is a poet, translator, critic, and university teacher. He has published a number of articles, essays, and reviews in Polish and foreign magazines. A winner of Wrocław’s Silesius Poetry Award (2018), he has been nominated for other accolades, notably the Nike Literary Award (2008) and the Orpheus Poetry Award (2013). A recipient of a scholarship from the US government, he took part in a literary programme in Iowa (1999). Since 1994, he has been an editor of Literatura na Świecie. He lives in Łódź.

Tomasz Bąk

Fot. Biuro Literackie

About the book:

The end of a relationship and mourning over it, more or less casual relationships with more or less random people, problems with one’s own body, splinters of media life with its seasonal scandals, the basically friendly city of Łódź and lots of dogs in various textual configurations — ‘Mondo cane’ by Jerzy Jarniewicz unfolds a poetry project that we have been watching for years and one that evolves very slowly – ‘in slow motion’. Jarniewicz’s trademark is a shortened perspective, which makes everything that the poet focuses his magnifying glass on emotionally and existentially close to us and mysterious at the same time. For we see only a piece of a larger whole – love, romance, friendship or a specific ‘ordinary’ situation. The right effect is the outcome of combining human characters with non-human surroundings: city streets filled with details, hotels, parks, flats, means of transport, all equally involved in the action.

Alina Świeściak, member of the Wisława Szymborska Award Committee

The book has been directed by its author along the lines of the mondo movie genre. Jarniewicz records his acquaintances’ real-life deaths, breakups, and departures – and pitilessly inspects his own reactions to these ‘endgames’. He takes a mocking approach to the confessional poetry model when he exposes both the perverse voyeurism of the media and the frailty of his own body, succumbing to illness with ever growing frequency. He continues to change his syntactic perspective: he sets his lens at an ironic distance and just moments later he camcords everything in a shockingly intimate close-up. Here you will find everything you always wanted to see but were never allowed.

Tomasz Bąk

Fot. R. Siderski

Małgorzata Lebda

Małgorzata Lebda (b. 1985) grew up in the Beskidian village of Żeleźnikowa Wielka. She has authored six books of poetry, including such award-winning publications as Matecznik and Sny uckermärkerów. Her most recent book – Mer de Glace – was released in 2021 by Warstwy. Her books have been translated into Serbian, Italian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovenian. Lebda is a scholar, columnist, facilitator of art projects, and ultramarathon runner. In September 2021, she ran a distance of  1113 kilometres as part of a poetic/activist gesture, following the Vistula river from its sources to its Baltic mouth. She is currently working on her prose debut. She lives in Kraków and, increasingly, at other places.

About the book:

The Mer de Glace is the second longest glacier in the Alps, on the French side of the Mont Blanc massif. It was none other than its name that Małgorzata Lebda selected for the title of her most recent book of poetry. It is advisable to start with the title as it reveals that – in the context of the poet’s earlier books – we are dealing with a new opening. Hitherto strongly rooted in locality, focused on family relations, and associated with rural themes (Granica lasu, Matecznik, Sny uckermӓrkerów), in Mer de Glace Lebda’s poetry takes the reader on a journey around Poland and Central Europe. The photographic snapshots and metaphorical references which are the hallmark of this lyric poetry bring us closer to the (mainly non-urban) landscapes, but also make up a multi-threaded narrative about man and the world around him.

When reading Małgorzata Lebda’s poems, I have the feeling they have been handwritten in black ink on snow-white paper. This poetry is extremely lyrical (a pleonasm though this might be), precise, and condensed. Lebda, like few others, weighs every word, knows its value as well as its taste, smell, and colour.

Janusz Drzewucki, member of the Wisława Szymborska Award Committee

Tomasz Bąk

Krzysztof Siwczyk

Krzysztof Siwczyk (b. 1977) is a poet and essayist, with sixteen books of poetry to his name, among these Dzikie dzieci (1995), Wiersze dla palących (2001), W państwie środka (2005), Centrum likwidacji szkód (2008), Koncentrat (2010), Gody (2012), Dokąd bądź (2014), Jasnopis (2016), Mediany (2018), Osobnikt (2020), and Krematoria I. Krematoria II (2021), in addition to books of essays, literary criticism and prose: Ulotne obiekty ataku (2010), Kinkiety w piekle (2012), Koło miejsca/Elementarz (2016), Bezduch (2018), Manuał (2020), and Sygnał w zenicie (2022).

He has also played the leading roles in two feature films: Wojaczek (directed by Lech Majewski, 1999) and Expelled (directed by Adam Sikora, 2010). Selections of his poems have been published in Germany, Italy, France, Slovenia, and the United States. Siwczyk has received a number of awards, notably the Kościelski Award (2014), the Gdynia Literary Prize in the essay category (2017), and the Václav Burian Award (2021). He works at the Instytut Mikołowski and lives in Gliwice.

About the book:

‘Krematoria’ is a mortuary concept album, a juxtaposition of (for the most part) minimalist phrases removed out of syntax, seemingly separate, but arranged into a story of dying that is impossible (to tell) and necessary at the same time. And it is precisely this strategy of evasion/control – avoiding, discussing an unnamed topic on the one hand, and on the other a rigorous, self-imposed, emotion-dampening form – that makes this book unique on the Polish mortuary literary landscape.

Alina Świeściak, member of the Wisława Szymborska Award Committee

Fot. Biuro Literackie

Dariusz Sośnicki

Dariusz Sośnicki (b. 1969). Poet. Recipient of awards presented by Czas Kultury magazine (1994) and the Poznań Review of New Publications (2002), nominated for the Paszport Polityki (2002) and the Gdynia Literary Prize (2015). He has been an editor of the art zine Już Jest Jutro (1990–1994) and the literary biweekly magazine Nowy Nurt (1994–1996); headed the Polish prose section at the publishing house Wydawnictwo W.A.B. (2005–2013); and served as editor-in-chief at Wydawnictwo Ossolineum (2015–2020). At present, he is an editor at Filtry, another publishing house.

About the book:

Why question the home – that place on earth that gives us support and security and which so many people long for when deprived of even a substitute for a home of their own? Maybe they are exactly the reason for it. When we celebrate yet another increasingly unholy holiday within our four walls, when family affairs, marriages, and rituals rob us of our strength, seriousness, and sense of reality, home becomes an ambiguous figure, and the comfort it offers rubs elbows with the fear of others. A poem in the home and a poem ‘after the home’ (Po domu). Construction based on a time-lapse film and the builder retracing their own footsteps; a new meaning of these footsteps and a new beginning.