S6E3 and all video recordings are available on our YouTube.

Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature is a video series for anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More about the Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature series and the timeline.

This is the second in a series of episodes presenting contemporary Polish poets and their work. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the first episode in this series with Krystyna Dąbrowska and Tomasz Różycki from season 4.

Julia Fiedorczuk is a writer, poet, translator and professor at Warsaw University, where she helped to create a Center for Environmental Humanities. Her work explores the relationship between human beings and their planetary environments and emphasizes the world-making power of literature. She has authored short story collections and novels, including Pod Słońcem (Under the Sun) and Dom Oriona (The House of Orion) as well as six poetry volumes, the most recent of which is Glif (Glyph, 2024). She has also published essays, including Cyborg w ogrodzie: wprowadzenie do ekokrytyki (A Cyborg in the Garden: Introduction to Ecocriticism). She was nominated for the Nike prize, Poland’s highest literary award, in 2016 and twice for the Julian Tuwim Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the laureate of the 2018 Szymborska Prize for Psalmy (Psalms). Oxygen, a volume of her selected poems translated by Bill Johnston, was longlisted for the National Translation Award in the USA (2016). Julia Fiedorczuk has performed at numerous literary festivals in Poland and across the world; her work has been translated into over 20 languages, including books in English, German, Spanish, Swedish, Serbian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Chinese and Georgian. She is a columnist for Polityka, a popular Polish weekly and a frequent guest of poetry shows on Polish radio.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski (b. 1979) is a poet, essayist, critic. He is Editor-in-Chief of the literary bimonthly Topos and the art director of the European Poet of Freedom Festival. He has been published in many journals in Poland and abroad: The New Yorker, Boston Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, and many others. He is the author of six volumes of poetry: Wypieki (1999), e-mail (2000), mazurek (2002), Te Deum (2005, 2008), Czarny kwadrat (2009), and Pomiędzy (2013). He has won numerous awards including the Horst Bienek Prize (2014), the Kościelski Prize (2009), the Hubert Burda Prize (2008) and, from Tadeusz Różewicz, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Culture (2006). He was nominated for the Nike prize in 2010. His work has been translated into 20 languages including English, German, Estonian, Czech, Ukrainian, and others.He lives in Gdańsk on the Baltic Coast of Poland.

In this episode, Fiedorczuk and Dąbrowski offer their perspectives on the contemporary poetry scene in Poland. They discuss topics such as eco poetry and the case of the Polish poet after the Romantic vision of the poet’s role in society. We also read their original poetry in Polish along with recent translations by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Bill Johnston.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski and Julia Fiedorczuk in English translation:

Tadeusz Dąbrowski. Black Square. Tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Brookline, Mass.: Zephyr Press, 2011.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski. Posts. Tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Brookline, Mass.: Zephyr Press, 2018.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski. The Scent of Man. Tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Medford, Mass.: Arrowsmith Press, 2025.

Julia Fiedorczuk. Psalms. Tr. Bill Johnston. Wisconsin Poetry Series. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023.

Julia Fiedorczuk. Oxygen. Tr. Bill Johnston. Brookline, Mass.: Zephyr Press, 2017.

Julia Fiedorczuk. Orion’s Shoulder. Tr. Bill Johnston. Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2018.

Julia Fiedorczuk, Mary Newell, Bernard Quetchenbach, and Orchid Tierney, eds. The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics. New York: Routledge, 2025.

David A. Goldfarb, Host & Producer
Bartek Remisko, Curator and Executive Producer
Natalia Iyudin, Produce