KRAKOW
Ewa Lipska, Nowy wybór wierszy [New selected poems] (Kraków, 2019)
Ewa Lipska is the most outstanding Polish poet, connected to the New Wave generation, close to its representatives with her linguistic sensitivity and distrust of any imposed discourses, she is one of the most important and, at the same time, the most separate voices in contemporary Polish poetry. Since Lipska's debut collection Poems (1967), she has never published a weak book, and the last decades have already witnessed a wonderful flourishing of this poetry-very personal and at the same time diagnosing from the perspective of an individual existential experience the surrounding reality, the wilderness of mass culture and the trap of civilization. The author's selection of poems prepared by herself - thought-provoking, moving - shows that the power of this poetry has never been a question of the historical context, generational trends, cultural fashions or social conditions. We offer a compact volume that perfectly presents Ewa Lipska - a poet of our time. Ewa Lipska for many years lives and writes in Kraków
Krakow UNESCO City of Literature (image: Tomasz Wiech)
Adam Zagajewski, Prawdziwe życie [Real life] (Kraków, 2019)
Adam Zagajewski’s attention is focused on the past, but the tone of gentle melancholy to which he has accustomed us is broken here with a mood of anxiety. Lost childhood and youth; a life that was lost or wiped out not only by time but also by cosmic catastrophes-these are the leitmotifs of the book. The end of time is coming, says the poet, and nothing can be done about it. The salvation is memory - both recalling the days of happiness and moderation, and the memory of crime and evil. We should observe carefully, remember the beauty and cruelty of the world doomed to destruction. This is a message for us who live "a hundred years after the end /of the first war". This collection is an attempt to summarize, merge and name the experience of existence. Adam Zagajewski for many years lives and writes in Kraków.
Conrad Festival (Image: Tomasz Weich)
Chulud Szaraf, Powrót do gór. Dziennik w cieniu wojny [Return to the Mountains] (Kraków, 2019)
Return to the Mountains is a poetic prose that combines elements of a journal, travel literature and free-flowing philosophical reflection. When Szaraf returns to her hometown after many years, images from her childhood are revived, and individual memory begins to intertwine with the history of the Middle East, preserved not only in monumental monuments, but also in the wealth of old rituals and austere volcanic landscape. Since the laws of human dignity no longer seem to exist in a war-torn world, the past is the only key to understanding the present. In 2019, the book won the Ibn Battuta Award in Morocco. Chulud Szaraf is a Syrian poet and artist, author of two poetry books in Polish translation–Odwrócone niebo [Reversed Sky] (2019) and Return to the Mountains (2020). Szaraf is a former ICORN writer-in-residence, who spent in Kraków over two years.