Grzegorz Kwiatkwski is a guest of the first inaugural podcast “Standing Up to the Assault on Democracy” of the CEU Democracy Institute and talks to Andrea Peto from Central European University, Tali Nates from Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Bjorn Krondorfer from Martin-Springer Institute and Steven Carr from Purdue University.
Today is the premiere of German book “brennend”, translated and with a foreword by University of Connecticut professor Peter Constantine. The book is published by Parasitenpresse.
The new issue of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies is out. In the “Creative Work” section you can find selected poetry of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski translated by professor Peter Constantine.
Γκζέκος Κβιατκόβσκι: «Οι συγγραφείς είμαστε ένα σφουγγάρι που ρουφάει φωνές και αφηγήσεις απ’ το χτες»
Συνομιλία του Πολωνού ποιητή και μουσικού Grzegorz Kwiatkowski με τον μεταφραστή της ποιητικής συλλογής του «Θέρισμα» Peter Constantine που κυκλοφορεί στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις του περιοδικού Τεφλόν. Φωτογραφία: Tomasz Pawluczuk.
Polish poet and musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski offers a cold, distilled look at the collusion of everyday Poles who participated in, or fueled, the murder of Jews during WWII. His minimalist writing, as Jesse Nathan describes for McSweeney’s “Short Conversations with Poets” series, has the impact of a “dagger”: “Punctuation is rare, and so is human decency.” I recently spoke to Kwiatkowski about his work, and here we present that interview together with English translations of his poetry by Peter Constantine and newly commissioned Yiddish translations of his poetry by Magdalena Kozłowska.
I first met poet and musician Grzegorz Kwiatkowski via email when we began corresponding about his band, the Polish political psych-rock four-piece Trupa Trupa. Over the course of our exchange, we began talking about poetry. At the time, Kwiatkowski was working with Rain Taxi and the translator Peter Constantine on a chapbook called Crops. He sent it to me, and I was stunned; the poems were short, ruthless fragments about the horrors of the 20th century, sourced from historical documents but reading as contemporary as ever. This is the crux of Kwiatkowski’s music and writing: to make art against the bleakness of humanity. I was thrilled when he agreed to have a conversation over email about his work as a multi-genre artist.
Die polnische Band Trupa Trupa kommt auf Deutschland-Tour und verströmt in ihrer Musik eine rastlose Energie, die an das kompromisslose Punk-Ethos von Fugazi erinnert. Ein Gespräch mit dem Sänger Grzegorz Kwiatkowski über seine Gedichte, seine Musik und den Pessimismus in der Welt.
During World War II, Granary Island in the Polish port city of Gdansk was the site of a Jewish ghetto. Imprisonment in the Red Mouse granary was the last stop for thousands of people before they were transported to concentration camps in Stutthoff, Auschwitz and Treblinka. The building no longer exists. The place of death, suffering, and humiliation is now an empty square.
Video report from the premiere of my French book “Joies” published by La rumeur libre éditions. The meeting took place at the Maison de la Poésie in Paris and was attended by: Audrey Kichelewski, Claude Mouchard, Mateusz Chmurski and Guillaume Métayer.
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a new and dynamic poetic voice from Poland, with six volumes of poetry and several translations on the way, as well as the vocalist of the psychedelic postpunk band Trupa Trupa. His newest collection, Crops, translated into English by Peter Constantine, was published by Rain Taxi in November 2021. In this interview, Constantine and Kwiatkowski discuss the themes of his poetry and his endeavors as a musician and activist.