University of Sussex, Language and Culture Series 2015/2016
Tuesday 15 March, 5:30 pm
Language Learning Centre, Arts A
Maria Jastrzᶒbska, poet and author of At the Library of Memories and Dementia Diaries will be talking with Jeremy Page about her new book Cedry z Walpole Park, growing up and living in more than one culture and the impact on her writing.
What makes a Polish writer Polish or a British writer British ? Is it the language they employ? Or what they write about? Can poetry transcend identity? Should it aim to? Is there such a thing as universality? Writer John O’Donoghue has said of Maria’s work: ‘There’s a subtlety and seeing-round corners perspective to her poems that could be Polish, could be queer or could be pure Jastrzębska.’
Maria Jastrzębska is a Polish born poet, editor and translator. She is the author of six poetry collections, including At The Library of Memories (Waterloo Press, 2013), and a literary drama Dementia Diaries which toured with Lewes Live Literature in 2011. She was co-editor of Queer in Brighton (New Writing South, 2014). Her work is frequently anthologized, most recently in Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), and features in the British Library project Poetry Between Two Worlds. Her selected poems, Cedry z Walpole Park/The Cedars of Walpole Park, have been translated into Polish by Anna Błasiak, Paweł Gawroński and Wioletta Grzegorzewska and published in a dual language collection (K.I.T, Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów, Faktoria series, 2015). See also: www.mariajastrzebska.wordpress.com
This poet’s coat of arms has a wolf on it. Her language sniffs out, tracks, rips flesh, fights, sometimes choses escape, parties madly, desires. Don’t you wish you were in her pack! – Eliza Szybowicz