Behind a curtain of leaves, behind the trees \u2013 people\u2019s shadows, heart-breaking stories told with reticence and hesitation. Something to do with nationality, memory, language and something about gender. Identity patiently revealed in the next image, memory, experience.
\u2013 Karol Maliszewski
In elegantly crafted, beautiful, original and nostalgic \u2013 never sentimen\u00adtal \u2013 stories, Maria Jastrz\u0119bska shows us a reality filled with arrivals and separations in which \u2018the two strangers\u2019 can turn out to be your grandpa\u00adrents.
\u2013 Urszula Chowaniec
In superb translations by Anna B\u0142asiak, Wioletta Grzegorzewska and Pawe\u0142 Gawro\u0144ski, they sound clearly and are like the bumblees in the poem of that same title which granny Julka held to her ear. They hummed, grumbling in the dark\/space between her palms and then\/she\u2019d let them go.
\u2013 Anna Piwkowska
This poet\u2019s coat of arms has a wolf on it. Her language sniffs out, tracks, rips flesh, fights, sometimes choses escape, parties madly, desires. Don\u2019t you wish you were in her pack!
\u2013 Eliza Szybowicz
Maria Jastrz\u0119bska \u2212 poet, editor, translator and animateur. Born in Warsaw in 1953, she and her family emigrated to the UK four years later. She studied psychology at Sussex University 1973-1976 and lives in Brighton.
She has published Postcards From Poland (Working Press, 1991), Home from Home (Flarestack, 2002), Syrena (Redbeck Press, 2004), I\u2019ll Be Back Before You Know It (Pighog Press 2009), Everyday Angels (Waterloo Press 2009) and At The Library of Memories (Waterloo Press 2013). Her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally including Edinburgh, Cardiff, Brighton, Southampton. She co-translated Elsewhere, the selected poems of Iztok Osojnik with Ana Jelnikar (Pighog Press 2011) and is translating the work of Justyna Bargielska.
Her own poems in translation have featured in: artPapier, Fraza, Poezja Dzisiaj, Pamietnik Literacki (translated by Anna Maria Mickiewicz), Pe\u0142nym G\u0142osem, Szafa and Salon Literacki. In 2012 her work was recorded in the British Library archive project Poetry and Translation \u2013 Between Two Worlds. Her poetry has been translated into Polish, Finnish, French and Slovenian.<\/p>\n