Published August 2024 by Seagull Books

The sixty-four poems in A Calligraphy of Days reflect Krzysztof Siwczyk’s wide-ranging and variegated style. Born in 1977, Siwczyk has lived most of his life in the Silesian city of Gliwice. In 1995, he became a wunderkind of the Polish poetry scene with his debut volume Wild Kids, an edgy and unsentimental narrative of youthful tribulations and urban malaise during Poland’s transition from communism to capitalism. Siwczyk’s poems careen down the page at great speed, relying on clever turns of phrase or an idea that illuminates a larger meaning. As in calligraphy, a meandering subterranean process connects meaning and memory, thought and verse. Teased to the surface, words and images emerge in rapid, terse, and precise bursts.

Throughout his career, Siwczyk has never ceased to challenge our sense of who we are—changing course multiple times in the process. Following several volumes full of expansive lines, his most recent works offer spare meditations on illness and grief. Clipped and understated, these post-Holocaust poems address our inability to speak of death and tragedy.

Review

“The poet pulls to pieces various kinds of ideologies, possibly the most repulsive of them being the patchwork of consumerism and religion. Ever excellent in his technique, he takes aim at the hollow religious idiom and sets a ravenous language against it. Under such pressure, clerical paraphernalia fall into confusion. Deprived of the signified, they resemble dirty, forlorn bus stops with blurred timetables.” ― Marek Olszewski

“I have no doubt that the book is a breakthrough. And not only for Siwczyk and his work. I have the impression that it might involve a specific segment of contemporary Polish poetry. Revaluation? I do not know. I would prefer not to abuse the term. However, what we are dealing with in this poem is an attempt to sum up, organise, evaluate, and to look anew not only at poetry but also at real life and the life in words. A poet who has already written quite a few books (and not just poetry books) now begins to browse through himself. A poet who has already received many significant awards now begins to notice other orders which had thus far remained tangential to his interests.” ― Piotr Kepinski

“A new quality in the work of a poet of established literary merit, one recognized not only as the author of two decades’ worth of poetry collections and labeled as ‘the voice of the MTV generation’, but also as a literary critic, a cultural activist, a publisher, and even an actor.” ― Jury of the Koscielski Prize

About the Author

Krzysztof Siwczyk is an award-winning poet, critic, and essayist from Poland. He has published over fourteen volumes of poetry, and his work has been translated into numerous languages, including Italian, French, and German. He lives in Gliwice, Poland, and works at the Rafal Wojaczek Institute in Mikolów. 

Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet and translator of a dozen volumes of contemporary Polish poetry. He teaches global literary studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. 

Alice-Catherine Carls is Tom Elam Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Tennessee at Martin. She is a translator from Polish and English into French and from French into English.

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A Calligraphy of Days by Krzysztof Siwczyk | Seagull Books