Friday, February 28, 2025 | 6:30 PM–8:30 PM
Polish Slavic Center
176 Java Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Reading and conversation with Krzysztof Siwczyk, and translator Piotr Fiorczyk

Join us for the next part of Contemporary Polish Poetry on Tour in the U.S., featuring readings and conversations with award-winning Polish poet Krzysztof Siwczyk and translator Piotr Florczyk, occasioned by the publication of Siwczyk’s debut in English, A Calligraphy of Days: Selected Poems, which gathers sixty-four poems spanning his career. 

A Calligraphy of Days

Selected Poems

Verses that oscillate between the turmoil of post-communist Eastern Europe to understated reflections on grief and mortality.

The sixty-four poems in A Calligraphy of Days, translated by Piotr Florczyk and Alice-Catherine Carls,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.

Krzysztof Siwczyk is an award-winning poet, critic, and essayist from Poland. Krzysztof Siwczyk, born in 1977, became a wunderkind of the Polish poetry scene with his 1995 debut volume Wild Kids. Over the course of his career, he has received some of Poland’s most prestigious literary honors, including the Kościelski Award and the Gdynia Literary Prize, and has published more than 20 volumes of poetry and prose, and his work has been translated into numerous languages, including Italian, French, and German. His most recent poetry collection, A Calligraphy of Days, was published by the University of Chicago. He lives with his family in Gliwice, Silesia and works at the Rafał Wojaczek Institute in Mikołów.

Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet, critic, and translator. His recent books include Swimming Pool, and Object Lessons title, and the poetry collection From the Annals of Kraków, which is based on the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, as well as numerous volumes of translations. He teaches global literary studies at the University of Washington, and lives with his family in Los Angeles.

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.

CONTEMPORARY POLISH POETRY on Tour in the U.S.: Krzysztof Siwczyk is presented with the support of the Polish Book Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, and American partners, this event coincides with the publication of “A Calligraphy of Days: Selected Poems,” the English-language debut of KS. Translated by Piotr Florczyk and Alice-Catherine Carls, the collection was released by Seagull Books in December 2024.