S5E9 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.

Ryszard Krynicki (b. 1943) is a poet, translator, and publisher known for his precision and uncanny efficiency in the use of language that conveys a complex range of thought in few words and simple forms. He was born during the war in a Nazi labor camp in Sankt Valentin, Austria, and the circumstances of his birth in Austria to Polish parents from territory that is now Ukraine, relocated after World War II to the “recovered territories” reclaimed by Poland from Germany. He was one of the leading figures of the “New Wave” of the 1960s that included such poets as Stanisław Barańczak, Julian Kornhauser, Ewa Lipska, and Adam Zagajewski (see “Encounters” S3E4—“Nowa Fala”), and is considered part of the Generation of ’68 that formed an opposition to Communism in Poland. During the pre-Solidarity years, he was on the editorial board of the underground journal Zapis, and published abroad in Zeszyty Literackie (Paris) and Puls (London). He spent many years in Poznań, where he and his wife, Krystyna founded the publishing house, A5, and lives today in Kraków.

In this episode we discuss the questions of identity raised in Krynicki’s poetry. We look at his attention to animals and small things and the influence of haiku master, Kobayashi Issa. Clare Cavanagh discusses her direct experience of working with Krynicki as a translator, and the many challenges that Krynicki’s poetry presents to anyone who endeavors to translate it.

Ryszard Krynicki in English Translation:

Ryszard Krynicki. Citizen R.K. Does Not Live. Selected with an introduction by Stanisław Barańczak. Tr. Stanisław Barańczak & Clare Cavanagh, John Carpenter, Grażyna Drabik, Antony Graham, Magnus Kryński & Robert A. Maguire, Frank Kujawinski, and Bogusław Rostworowski. Forest Grove, Oregon: Mr. Cogito Press, 1985. (Best found at research libraries or through interlibrary loan.)

Ryszard Krynicki. Magnetic Point. Tr. Clare Cavanagh. New York: New Directions, 2017.

Ryszard Krynicki. Our Life Grows. Tr. Alissa Valles. Afterword by Adam Michnik. New York: NYRB/Poets, 2018.                                                                         

Clare Cavanagh is Frances Hooper Professor and of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Slavic Literatures and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University.  Her book, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for 2010.  She received a 2018 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a 2019 ZAIKS Award from the Polish Writers Union for her many volumes of Polish poetry in translation, including the work of Wisława Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski, and Ryszard Krynicki. Other honors include membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Harold Langdon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets; the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award; the MLA William Riley Parker Award; and fellowships from the NEH and Guggenheim Foundation. She recently co-translated Miron Białoszewski, Oho: Selected Poetry and Prose with Michał Rusinek and Alissa Valles (forthcoming, New York Review Books, 2025). She is currently working on an authorized biography of Czesław Miłosz (under contract, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

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