BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2022 | WSCHODNI EXPRESS AND ZAKOTWICZONE

Books published in 2022 are available in our store at: https://sklep.warsztatykultury.pl/

Wschodni Express

  • Title: KGB i inne wiersze / KGB and other poems
  • Author: Igor Pomerantsev
  • Polish translation: Zbigniew Dmitroca

“KGB i inne wiersze” / KGB and other poems– Igor Pomerantsev’s poems are typically brief—rarely more than a dozen lines. The almost constant use of irony, self-irony, and occasionally sarcasm is another defining characteristic. They are frequently novellas that are based on both real and imagined events. The poet assumes the parts of his protagonists much like an actor would: he adopts the personas of his protagonists, whether they are a lonely senior, a patient in a mental institution, the manager of a retirement home, or a lab mouse. He does not shy away from difficult, unpoetic issues like incurable diseases, pandemic, long-term incarceration, old age, death, and war. The book ends with powerful poems that were written during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and with which the exiled author is spiritually and biographically tied.

Igor Pomerantsev (b. 1948 in Saratov) – grew up and completed his studies at the University in Chernivtsi. Since 1978, he has resided in the west, including Germany, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic. He has spent 40 years working for BBC and Radio Svoboda, two international Russian-language radio stations. He’s a prolific writer of lyric poetry, essays, and books of prose. In literature, he focuses on the four elements: water (in the book about wine – Late Vintage), earth (Czer- nowitz, Cziernowcy, Czerniwcy), air (the play “Do you hear me?) and fire ( love poems Homo Eroticus). His poetry and prose have been translated into Ukrainian, English, Polish, Czech and German. He has produced a number of documentaries, one of which focused on the war in eastern Ukraine. Regular participant at the Meridian Czernowitz Poetry Festival.

  • Title: Lustrzany Sześcian / The Mirror Cube
  • Author: Les Beley
  • Translation: Bohdan Zadura

Lustrzany Sześcian / The Mirror Cube –  at first glance, Leś Beley’s poems have a conventional, agreeable lyricism that makes them seem cultured and sophisticated. However, upon closer examination, one may discern an endeavor to grasp the totality of human existence, with the poems annexing ever larger areas, ranging from geographical and temporal to cultural expansion. The erudition of this poet is admirable. The examination of the world is accompanied by the exploration of the self. While one frequently runs into tired (or worn-out) tropes or metaphors here, this first impression is misleading because the Author retains full control over them and avoids sentimentality. Lustrzny Sześcian / The Mirror Cube  with its classicist spirit, is in fact avant-garde.

Les Beley (b. 1987 in Uzhhorod) – lives in Kiyv. He studied Ukrainian philology at Uzhorod University and English at Wrocław University. He works at the Potebnia Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He has published three collections of poetry, including: Son et Lumiere. Листи без відповіді (Son et Lumiere. Listy bez odpowiedzi), 2007, Дзеркальний куб (Lustrzany sześcian), 2012, Книга про ліс (Księga lasu), 2016 and books of prose: Ліхіє дев’яності. Любов і ненависть в Ужгороді (Marne lata dziewięćdziesiąte. Miłość i nienawiść w Użhorodzie), 2014 oraz План порятунку України (Plan ratunkowy dla Ukrainy), 2018. The winner of “Debut” (2008) and Smoloskyp Publisher Prize (2011). His poems have been translated into English, Polish, Czech, Greek, and Serbian.

  • Title: Klara. Bande dessinée
  • Author: Agnė Žagrakalytė
  • Translation: Zuzanna Mrozik

“Klara. Bande dessinée” –A starving half-orphan? A drug smuggler? A victim of a local hooligan? A comic book artist? Who is Clara, little Clara? One of them? All of them at the same time? Will art and fantasy help her cope with reality? It’s a novel about the position of a Central European in the western world. It’s  about a wounded child in an adult world. It’s about the desire to free oneself from burdens.It’s about the past that haunts. It’s about working on oneself and escaping from oneself and about striving for integration and constant disintegration. And it’s also about tasty dumplings.

Agnė Žagrakalytė (b. 1979 in Puodžiai in Pasvalys District Municipality) – a Lithuanian poet, novelist, columnist. She studied Lithuanian philology at Vilnius Pedagogical University. In the years 2003–2005, he worked in the cultural weekly “Literatūra ir menas“. She has lived in Brussels since 2004. She has published four poetry books and two novels, and won many important Lithuanian literary awards. Her works have been translated into English, French, German, Slovenian and Italian. In Poland, her poems have been published in “Arteria”, “Borussia”, “Pismo”, “Tekstualia” and “Tygiel Kultury”. Two of Žagrakalytė’s poetry books were published in 2019 in a Polish translation by Agnieszka Rembiałkowska, one of which earned her a nomination for the European Poet of Freedom award in 2020.

  • Title: Ostatni pocałunek Ilijicza / Lenin’s Last Kiss
  • Author: Vano Krueger
  • Translator: Bohdan Zadura

“Váno Krueger’s poetry is just as global in scope as the revolution was intended to be, not only because it features the Kremlin and the White House, the Vatican and Istanbul, Warsaw, Berlin, Lvov, Sarajevo and the Twin Towers, Mao and Radovan Karadžić, Freud and Ctulhu. The latter is a good opportunity to discuss Lovecraftian horror in several of the poems, including „Chemical Wedding,” which is dedicated to Elizabeth Bathory, the Bloody Lady of Čachtice, considered the bloodiest serial killer in history. The horrors accumulated in Krüeger’s poetry, often contrasted with an idyll that never anticipates them, allow the reader to experience a kind of catharsis that not all poetry can provide.” Bohdan Zadura.

Váno Krueger (real name Iwan  Ivan Kolomijec, b. 1976 r. in Kyiv) – A political scientist and graduate of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. One of the most controversial writers in modern Ukrainian literature, who refers to his style as “necro-communism”. Author of several volumes of poetry.

Grafika z okładkami 6 ksiażek

ZAKOTWICZONE

  • Title: Liberation
  • Author: Józef Łobodowski

A century ago, in 1922, Józef Łobodowski – poet, translator, prose writer, columnist and the first spokesperson for the Polish-Ukrainian dialogue – returned to his native Lublin by train from the Caucasus. As a child growing up among Cuban Cossacks, he had witnessed both poverty and the momentous Communist Revolution. His previously unpublished drama “Wyzwolenie” / “Liberation” has just been published in the “Zakotwiczone” series and offers insights into the sociopolitical system of the Great Depression era.

  • Title: Dobranoc, świecie / Goodnight, world
  • Author: Jacob Glatstein
  • Translators: Bella Szawarcman-Czarnota, Monika Adamczyk Garbowska

Jacob (Yankev) Glatstein (1896-1971) – a Jewish poet, writer, and literary critic who wrote in the Yiddish language. He was born in Lublin. In 1914, he immigrated to the USA, where he established the Inzikhist (Introspectivist) literary movement and founded the modernist poetry group “In Sich” and co-edited the first anthology of poetry addressing the Holocaust. He is a renowned Jewish poet who wrote in Yiddish, which is why he remains practically unknown in Poland. His introspective modernist poetry features familiar, Lublin theme, the reality of New York, as well reflections on tradition and mourning the victims of the Holocaust and the destruction of the world of Eastern European Jews.