Jakub Kornhauser’s Hemorrhages & Squirrels, translated by Piotr Florczyk, reminds me of another poet, yet I’m not sure that poet exists, which is to say, Kornhauser is an original. Here are prose poems that try and define with intentionally declarative telling titles such as “Poem About Remembrance” or “Poem About Fatherland” or “Poem Not About Fatherland,” as if to suggest over and over that setting out to define (or via negativa) can only expand the imagination. — Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World and OBIT

Brief as these prose poems appear, beneath their blandly repetitive titles, they cover an uncanny territory that belies diminutive form. Jakub Kornhauser achieves this breadth by leaping and dodging, without ever seeming to know where he’s headed or might land next. The effect feels satirical at times, digressive at others, and often feels disquieting. Kornhauser’s intuitive shifts in tone are as exhilarating as they are unsettling. This translation of Hemorrhages & Squirrels is a welcome gift to readers, who have frankly too little access to contemporary poetry beyond the borders of English. — David Axelrod, author of Skiing with Dostoyevsky: New & Selected Poems

Hemorrhages & Squirrels is a collection of prose poems by one of Poland’s rising literary stars, Jakub Kornhauser, translated into English by Piotr Florczyk. While its subjects and themes seem arbitrary, the associative aspect is foregrounded, and it’s best not to try to figure things out. This is also true of the volume’s intertextual roots, as the poems feature various props lifted from the work of Adam Zagajewski and Julian Kornhauser (the poet’s father). This work is meant to feel sudden and fleeting, chaotic, even, but also thrilling, especially since reading a Jakub Kornhauser poem will lead you to begin in one place and end up someplace else.

The publication is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute New York. The book is available for purchase.

In April 2026 the Polish Cultural Institute New York will partner on the book tour in the U.S. (Details will be announced in March)

Jakub Kornhauser is a Polish poet, essayist, translator, editor, literary scholar, co-founder and employee of the Centre for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He has published five volumes of prose poetry (he received the Wisława Szymborska Award 2016 for Drożdżownia [The Yeast Factory]), several monographs on the European avant-gardes, as well as books translated from French, Romanian, and Serbian (including works by Henri Michaux, Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum and Miroljub Todorović). He recently published a collection of bicycle essays entitled Premie górskie najwyższej kategorii [Mountain Climbs Hors Catégorie] (2020), which earned him the Znaczenia Award and Gdynia Literary Prize nomination. He lives in Kraków, Poland.

Piotr Florczyk is the author, translator, or editor of some two dozen books in English and in Polish. His work has been recognized with, among others, the 2016 Found in Translation Award, the 2017 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, the 2021 Translation Choice selection by UK’s Poetry Book Society, nominations for ASEEES and PEN Club awards. He teaches global literary studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and lives with his wife and their two children in Los Angeles. For more info about him and his work, please visit his web site.