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.
On September 17 Grzegorz Kwiatkowski will perform as a panellist at the Czech Music Navigator festival.
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.
On Saturday, August 13, the third edition of the Sangam and Agora event will take place. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and UCLA professor Vinay Lal will host Poet Laureate of San Francisco Kim Shuck, Oxford University professor Paul Lodge and a couple of scientists and filmmakers – Dr. Anjali Monteiro and Dr. K.P. Jayasankara.
You are invited to join the second edition of Sangam and Agora – Forum of Poets, Scholars, and Autodidacts. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski together with UCLA professor Vinay Lal will host such great guests: David Garyan, Betty Govinden, Bongani Kona and Henry C. Theriault.
If you’re looking for somebody to adequately explain to you what Trupa Trupa does, I’m not that person. All I can do is try to provide some impressions because I really don’t have anything to compare it with. It’s bits and pieces. It seems chaotic but you always feel a structure. It can be aggressive. It can float and dream. It can do both in the same song. There really aren’t any rules going on here. It’s kind of like trying to define what Syd Barrett was doing with Pink Floyd before he went off the deep end.
The PEN Ten is PEN America’s weekly interview series. This week, PEN America’s senior director of Free Expression Programs Summer Lopez speaks with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, author of Crops (Rain Taxi, 2021).
