Cedry z Walpole Park / The Cedars of Walpole Park is the first bilingual, Polish-English collection of poems by a wonderful poet from Brighton, Maria Jastrzębska, translated into Polish by Anna Blasiak, Paweł Gawroński and Wioletta Grzegorzewska (Wioletta Greg of the European Literature Night 2015). The books has been published by K.I.T. Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów (5th volume in ‘Faktoria Poezji’ series), co-published by OFF_PRESS and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London.
About the book:
Behind a curtain of leaves, behind the trees – people’s shadows, heart-breaking stories told with reticence and hesitation. Something to do with nationality, memory, language and something about gender. Identity patiently revealed in the next image, memory, experience. – Karol Maliszewski
In elegantly crafted, beautiful, original and nostalgic – never sentimental – stories, Maria Jastrzębska shows us a reality filled with arrivals and separations in which ‘the two strangers’ can turn out to be your grandparents. – Urszula Chowaniec
In superb translations by Anna Błasiak, Wioletta Grzegorzewska and Paweł Gawroński, they sound clearly and are like the bumblees in the poem of that same title which granny Julka held to her ear. They hummed, grumbling in the dark/space between her palms and then/she’d let them go. – Anna Piwkowska
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
Maria Jastrzębska − poet, editor, translator and animateur. Born in Warsaw in 1953, she and her family emigrated to the UK four years later. She studied psychology at Sussex University 1973-1976 and lives in Brighton.
She has published Postcards From Poland (Working Press, 1991), Home from Home (Flarestack, 2002), Syrena (Redbeck Press, 2004), I’ll Be Back Before You Know It (Pighog Press 2009), Everyday Angels (Waterloo Press 2009) and At The Library of Memories (Waterloo Press 2013). Her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally including Edinburgh, Cardiff, Brighton, Southampton. She co-translated Elsewhere, the selected poems of Iztok Osojnik with Ana Jelnikar (Pighog Press 2011) and is translating the work of Justyna Bargielska.
Her own poems in translation have featured in: artPapier, Fraza, Poezja Dzisiaj, Pamie_̨tnik Literacki (translated byAnna Maria Mickiewicz), Pełnym Głosem, Szafa and Salon Literacki. In 2012 her work was recorded in the British Library archive project Poetry and Translation – Between Two Worlds. Her poetry has been translated into Polish, Finnish, French and Slovenian.
The book will be launched at two events in Lewes and London, with readings in English (by Maria) and in Polish (by Monika Stachyra in Lewes and Anna Blasiak in London).
LEWES
Sunday 29 November, 2.30pm
All Saints Centre
Friars Walk
Lewes, East Sussex BN7 2LE
Tickets: £4 advance / £6 on door. Book online
Part of Lewes Live Literature
LONDON
2 December, 6.30-8.30pm
Book & Kitchen
31 All Saints Road
Notting Hill
London W11 1HE
Tickets: £4, available in advance and at the door