Grzegorz Wróblewski

Dear beloved humans

Piotr Gwiazda

A still from "Grzegorz Wróblewski do ludzkości." (c) Krzysztof Jaworski.

For eight years now I have been translating the poetry of Grzegorz Wróblewski, a Polish writer and visual artist based in Copenhagen. So far we have published two volumes: Kopenhaga (Zephyr Press, 2013) and Zero Visibility (Phoneme Media, 2017). We are now working on our third project, Dear Beloved Humans: New and Selected Poems. The title poem offers a good example of transposition.

Zero Visibility, by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Al Filreis

Grzegorz Wróblewski’s new book, Zero Visibility, translated by Piotr Gwiazda*, has reached me — and I’m thrilled to have it. Wróblewski is constantly fascinating; he is often precise and whacky both. Many modes are here in this new book. One — perhaps my own favorite — is surrealist post-Soviet consciousness:

Cosmonauts

What was going through his mind when for the first time in his life
my dog saw a horse? He frozen like a statue, erect, hypnotized.

It was as if he had encountered a space alien.
He didn’t move until the horse disappeared over the horizon …

(Polish) Poetry after Różewicz

Marit MacArthur

Kacper Bartczak

I proselytize for Tadeusz Różewicz (1921–2014) and his poetic legacy as a new convert, not with unique insight into his importance or his poetics. That I leave to the eleven Polish poets sampled here (and several translators), who can testify better than I can.

November 24, 2015

Grzegorz Wróblewski and Różewicz

Piotr Gwiazda

In the interview published last year in this magazine, Polish poet, writer, and dramatist Grzegorz Wróblewski refers to Różewicz as a “great poet” and “genuine innovator.” It would be accurate to say that much of his own poetry, which he has been writing since the early 1980s, builds on Różewicz’s example. In many of his poems Wróblewski adopts an austere and straightforward style.

November 24, 2015

Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski (b. 1962)

Grzegorz Wróblewski

Piotr Gwiazda

Decline

YOU LIVE WITHOUT GOD FOR THERE IS NO GOD

THEY TOOK GOD FROM US GOD’S BLOOD IS FLOWING

YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD BECAUSE OF GOD

FOR THERE IS NO GOD HAS ANYONE SEEN GOD?

PRAY TO OUR GOD THE TERRIBLE GOD

THEY MURDERED OUR GOD YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD

BRING BACK OUR GOD! WE WANT OUR GOD!

November 24, 2015

'The passenger syndrome'

An interview with Grzegorz Wróblewski

Grzegorz Wróblewski

Piotr Gwiazda

Note: In early April 2014, Polish writer and painter Grzegorz Wróblewski gave readings from his book Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013) at Columbia University, Cambridge Public Library, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

August 28, 2014

Grzegorz Wroblewski’s poems performed in English, to music

Al Filreis

Marcus Slease, a native of Portadown, N. Ireland, moved to Las Vegas at the age of twelve and now lives in London. Recently he recorded English translations of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s poems. Wróblewski has appeared in Jacket and Jacket2 previously, e.g. here and here.

A world according to G.W.

On Grzegorz Wróblewski

Anna Kałuża

Translated from the Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese.

January 9, 2012

Recently in Jacket2

Jacket2's January 2019 reading period

Jacket2

Jacket2 welcomes unsolicited queries during the month of January 2019.

Jacket2 welcomes unsolicited queries during the month of January 2019. We are especially (though not exclusively) interested in queries of the following kinds:

— Reviews of recent books or anthologies of poetics criticism and theory

— Reviews and articles devoted to poets and poetries outside the US

— Reviews, articles, or essays that put texts, authors, movements in conversation

— Coauthored reviews or essays

The products of labor

A review of 'lo terciario/the tertiary'

Amy Paeth

The Spanish and English texts are rotated 180° relative to one another, such that the bilingual reader, halfway in, would rotate the book upside down to read the collection in its entirety. Or — if you are an anglophone reader, like myself — you are made literally aware that you are reading only one half of the book.

los productos del trabajo tienen sus residuos.
a estos residuos les llamamos objetividad espectral.
a esta objetividad espectral le llamamos mera gelatina.
a esta mera gelatina le llamamos
cristalizaciones de la sustancia social común.

a estas cristalizaciones les llamamos valor.[1]

So begins “todas sus propiedades sensibles se han esfumado,” the opening poem of lo terciario/the tertiary, the newest collection released in May by Puerto Rican poet and translator Raquel Salas Rivera. Or it begins:

Into-an-empty-swimming-pool-diving in love

Sommer Browning

a photograph of branches twisted into the shape of a person in an alcove — Ana Mendieta, Untitled from Silueta Series, Mexico, 1973-77

I am falling in love with a person. Isn’t falling in love one of the weirdest feelings you’ve ever had? I can’t say that it is pure joy. I mean we say FALLING in love for a reason. And, as you get older, falling is no joke. Forty-two-year-olds fall down and can break their body. But love falling is so much riskier! We really should call it plummeting in love. We really should call it into-an-empty-swimming-pool-diving in love. It feels like my realities are at stake. My sense of self. The view of my life from this angle — forty-two-year-old white mother poet lady.