Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a Polish poet, essayist, and musician. He is Artist-in-Residence at Yale University and curator of the series What About Exclusion? and Virus of Hate at the University of Oxford. His essays have appeared in The Guardian, Project Syndicate, World Literature Today, and The Flaming Hydra. His work confronts issues of history, memory, ethics, and violence. He is also a member of the psychedelic rock band Trupa Trupa, whose music has been released by Sub Pop and Glitterbeat Records and featured in NPR Tiny Desk and BBC Radio 6 Music sessions.
Writing
An author of several books of poetry revolving around the subjects of history, remembrance, and ethics. His books have been published in France, the United States, Germany, Slovenia, and Greece.
His essays have appeared in The Guardian, Project Syndicate, World Literature Today, and The Flaming Hydra.
He is a member of PEN America and a European literature platform Versopolis.
He was a guest of several festivals such as the Oslo Internasjonale Poesifestival and the Lahti International Writers Reunion.
He has been a beneficiary of numerous international literary programs such as “Artist in Residence” in Vienna and “Styria Artist in Residence” in Graz.
Music
He is a member of the psychedelic rock band Trupa Trupa. Their music has been released by labels such as Sub Pop, Glitterbeat Records, Ici d’ailleurs, and Lovitt Records. The Guardian praises their “off-kilter melodies” and lyrics probing the darker corners of the human condition, while Pitchfork calls them “a rare dystopian post-punk band to embrace optimism and levity as necessary survival mechanisms.”
The band performed at such events as
- Desert Daze Festival
- Rockaway Beach Festival
- SXSW
- Primavera Sound
- Iceland Airwaves
They have recorded sessions for NPR Tiny Desk, BBC Radio 6 Music and World Cafe. Among the band’s fans are Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins, who frequently play their music in their radio shows
Trupa Trupa’s music has also been featured in two films by acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland: “Green Border”, winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and “Franz”, a biopic about Franz Kafka.
Academic
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is the current Artist-in-Residence at Yale University and the curator of the series What About Exclusion? and Virus of Hate at the University of Oxford.
He was also a guest lecturer at:
- The University of California, Berkeley
- Stanford University
- Yale University
- Columbia University
- The University of California, Los Angeles
- Johns Hopkins University
- The University of Chicago
- New York University
- Northwestern University
- Jewish Theological Seminary
- The American University
- The University of Cambridge and the Ted Hughes Society (“Crow at 50”)
- The University of Texas at Dallas
- University of Connecticut
- University of Notre Dame
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Western University
- Kupferberg Holocaust Center of City University of New York
- The Holocaust Resource Center of Kean University
- Jewish Historical Institute
- The Galicia Jewish Museum
- Miroslaw Balka’s Studio of Spatial Activities at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
- University of Warsaw, Artes Liberales
- Jagiellonian University, UNESCO Chair for Education about the Holocaust at the Institute of European Studies
Together with UCLA professor Vinay Lal, he began the series Sangam and Agora: A Forum of Poets, Philosophers, Scholars, and Autodidacts.
Together with University of Oxford professor Paul Lodge, he began the series It Sings Therefore We Are: Philosophy and Music in Conversation.
He is taking part in “The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador” collaborative research initiative.
Media presence
His music and literary works have been published and reviewed in
- The Guardian
- New York Times
- Genocide Studies and Prevention
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- World Literature Today
- New Poetry In Translation
- CBC
- Pitchfork
- Die Welt
- Los Angeles Times
- Rolling Stone
- Newsweek
- Billboard
- Spin
- Chicago Tribune
- Chicago Reader
- Times
- NPR
- BBC
- KEXP.