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17 November 2022

Stereogum / B FLAT A

Trupa Trupa hail from Poland, where for over a decade they’ve been using serrated post-punk to draw connections between their country’s fascist past and the present day. According to singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, their new B FLAT A is about “the wasteland of human nature where hatred and genocide are not just distant reverberations of Central European history but still resonate in contemporary reality.” Out today, it’s a tense and explosive listen brimming with heady ideas, occasionally branching off in surprising directions like the psych-pop-tinged single “Uniforms.” Perhaps appropriately, the album’s baseline sound calls back to the Cold War era, the bridge between that old uncomfortable history and now.

Continue readingStereogum / B FLAT A
13 November 2022

Crops reviewed by John Bradley

It’s not often you open a poetry chapbook and in the “Foreword” are greeted with such a chilling anecdote:

“In the summer of 2015, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and his friend Rafal Wojczal made a gruesome discovery. Walking through the forest outside the Stutthof Concentration Camp where Kwiatkowski’s grandfather had been interned during the Second World War, the two young men came upon several thousand old shoes. These shoes once belonged to those the Nazis brought here and then brutally murdered.”

Continue readingCrops reviewed by John Bradley
4 November 2022

In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies

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.

Continue readingIn geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies
28 October 2022

The Offing

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.

Continue readingThe Offing
27 October 2022

Die Welt

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.

Continue readingDie Welt
27 October 2022

Times of Israel – the forgotten ghetto in the heart of Gdansk

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.

Continue readingTimes of Israel – the forgotten ghetto in the heart of Gdansk
29 August 2022

World Literature Today / Uncovering Buried Historical Memory: A Conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

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.

Continue readingWorld Literature Today / Uncovering Buried Historical Memory: A Conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski