The Lives of Saint Sabina. Launch of PSALM TO SAINT SABINA by Radosław Wiśniewski
Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski is the first publication released by a Ramsgate-based indie publisher, Sideways Press, set up in 2025 by a poet, translator and ELNet’s Managing Editor Anna Blasiak, and a photographer and artist, Lisa Kalloo.
Sideways Press’s ambition is to introduce English-language readers to some more translated writing – and especially poetry. After all there are so many literary voices in other languages which don’t easily find their way into English. Sideways Press aspires to change that, even just a little bit.
More at: sidewayspress.com
The first Sideways Press book is a long poem in 88 stanzas called Psalm to Saint Sabina which came out in Poland in several editions. It tells a story of Sabina Szopf, the protagonist’s (and the poet’s) great-grandmother and her turbulent life. Sabina was born in the Tsarist Russia in the year 1900, lived under the Soviet and German occupations and ended up settling after WW2 in the town of Brzeg in Silesia in Poland, previously a German town of Brieg. This book-length poem is a kind of personal and private process of sanctification of the protagonist’s great-grandmother, written in the language on one hand referencing Bible, psalms and litanies, and on the other hand simple and at times very colloquial, tinged with Sabina’s Eastern Borderlands linguistic quirks.
Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski was translated into English by Anna Blasiak. The poem is accompanied by photography by Lisa Kalloo.
“Psalm to Saint Sabina is a poetic meditation on memory, survival, and the quiet courage of everyday life. Radosław Wiśniewski chronicles the twentieth century through the eyes of his grandmother, her suffering, humour, stubbornness, and love, blending personal memory with collective history. Unsentimental and uncompromising, these poems bear witness to humanity in its most intimate and unforgettable form. Anna Blasiak, herself a poet, masterfully conveys the linguistic register of the poem, capturing both its elevated, psalmic tone and its colloquial, everyday phrases. A book to read slowly, to feel, and to return to again and again.”
– Wioletta Greg, author of “Swallowing Mercury”
“Readers meander through the 20th century as Wiśniewski scrupulously weaves the threads of Sabina’s life into a tapestry full of humanity, history, humor, and memory. Blasiak masterfully balances religious and colloquial language alongside comedy in her translation, as if Sabina were anglophone all along. A poem with everything, Kalloo’s photography adds further layers of nostalgia and reflection to a poem that truly speaks beyond its verses. Sabina is not only a saint, but someone we all know and love.”
– Clayton McKee, editor of Trafika Europe
The book will be launched during an exhibition called “The Lives of Saint Sabina” at Ramsgate’s Hold Creative Spaces. The exhibition will run from 17 till 19 April.
HOLD GALLERY, Penstone House, Albert Street, Ramsgate
Fri, 17 April, 6-9pm: PRIVATE VIEW
Sat, 18 April, open 12-7pm; 6pm: POETRY EXPLAINED (Book Launch) with RADOSŁAW WIŚNIEWSKI over Zoom
Sun, 19 April, open 12-5pm; 1-3pm: PHOTOGRAPHY EXPLAINED with LISA KALLOO
Radosław Wiśniewski is a Polish poet, prose writer and literary critic, co-founder and president of the indie publisher KIT Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów. He won several literary prizes in Poland. He published ten volumes of poetry: “Nikt z przydomkiem” (Nobody with a Nickname, 2003); Albedo (2006); “NeoNoe” (2009); “Abdykacja – wiersze zaangażowane i nie” (Abdication. Poems Engaged and Not, 2013); “Inne bluesy” (Other Blueses, 2015); “Psalm do św. Sabiny” (Psalm to Saint Sabina, 2016, 2022, 2022); “Dzienniki Zenona Kałuży” (Zenon Kałuża’s Diaries, 2017); “Kwestionariusz putinowski i inne medytacje w czasach postprawdy” (The Putin Questionnaire and Other Meditations in the Times of Post-Truth, 2018); “Korniki gniewu” (Borers of Anger, 2021) and “Siedem książek porzuconych” (Seven Abandoned Books, 2022). He also authored several prose books: “Palimpsest Powstanie” (Uprising Palimpsest, 2019); “Transmigracja” (Transmigration, 2019) and “1939 Apokalipsa. Początek” (1939 Apocalypse. The Beginning, 2020). His poems have been translated into English, German, Spanish, Czech and Hungarian. This is his first book in English.
Anna Blasiak is a poet, translator, managing editor of the European Literature Network and Head of Literature at the Polish Cultural Institute in London. She published two bilingual poetry and photography books (with Lisa Kalloo) “Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St-James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime” and “Deliverance / Rozpętanie”. She also published a book-length interview, “Lili. Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation with Anna Blasiak”. She translates poetry, fiction and non-fiction between Polish and English. Her recent poetry translations include Aneta Kamińska’s “Czernovitz-Charmovitz” (co-translated with Bohdan Piasecki, Arc Publications, 2024) and Łucja Dudzińska’s “BezTroska. Próby wyrazu / Mis-Concern. Attempts at Expression” (FONT, 2024). Her translation of Maciej Hen’s “According to Her” was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize in 2023. Recently her translation of Radosław Wiśniewski’s “Psalm to Saint Sabina” won the inaugural Trafika Europe’s Andrew Singer Prize for Verse. Anna regularly reviews books in translation for the ELN, where she also runs a monthly poetry column Poetry Travels, as well as a blog The Polka and a podcast The Polka Podcast, both devoted to Polish literature. She is one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki, a Polish platform publishing verse written by women poets. She is the editor of Sideways Press. More at annablasiak.com.
Lisa Kalloo is an art photographer with some experience in other areas of photography (magazines, book covers, events and traditional photography). Despite all this she keeps going back to hybrid photography. She explores different angles, gestures, old lenses, new lenses, old cameras, new cameras, digital, analogue and mixed. She loves the freedom that experimental photography affords. She feels that exploring photography as a medium enables her to better express her world. She exhibited her work in London, Oxford, Ramsgate, Broadstairs (including Turner Contemporary The Open and the Creative Isle Community), Margate and in Germany. She also worked in Poland, Venice and Romania. She was Highly Commended by Ambit Magazine. Her photography featured in The Queer Riveter magazine. She’s published “Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime” and “Rozpętanie / Deliverance”, both with Anna Blasiak’s poetry. Together they also run Poetry Travels on European Literature Network, a monthly column with a poem in translation into English always accompanied by Lisa’s images. More at lisakalloophotography.co.uk.
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