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.
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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to me, and I was stunned; the poems were short, ruthless fragments about the horrors of the 20th century, sourced from historical documents but reading as contemporary as ever.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.
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.
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.
Relacja z premiery Joies
Relacja z premiery francuskiej książki “Joies” wydanej przez La rumeur libre éditions i przetłumaczonej przez profesora Zbigniewa Naliwajka. Spotkanie odbyło się w Paryżu w Maison de la Poésie – Scène littéraire i wzięli w nim udział: Audrey Kichelewski, Claude Mouchard, Mateusz Ch i Métayer Guillaume.
Music Navigator
17 września Grzegorz Kwiatkowski wystąpi jako panelista na czeskim festiwalu Music Navigator.
Wywiad na łamach 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.
Sangam and Agora
W sobotę, 13 sierpnia odbędzie się trzecia odsłona wydarzenia Sangam and Agora – Forum of Poets, Scholars, and Autodidacts. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski wraz z profesorem UCLA Vinayem Lalem będą gościć poetkę laureatkę San Francisco Kim Shuck, muzyka i profesora Uniwersytetu Oksfordzkiego Paula Lodge’a oraz małżeństwo naukowców i filmowców – Dr. Anjali Monteiro i Dr. K.P. Jayasankara.
Sangam and Agora
16 lipca odbędzie się druga odsłona wydarzenia Sangam and Agora – Forum of Poets, Scholars, and Autodidacts. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski wraz z profesorem UCLA Vinayem Lalem będą gościć Henry’ego C. Theriault, Davida Garyana, Betty Govinden oraz Bongani Kona.
Henry Bereza / Wypiski Ostatnie
Henryk Bereza o twórczości Grzegorza Kwiatkowskiego w “Wypiskach Ostatnich” pod redakcją Pawła Orła wydanych przez Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.