A Calligraphy of Days: Selected Poems by Krzysztof Siwczyk, translated by Piotr Florczyk and Alice-Catherine Carls. Seagull Books, 2024.

The sixty-four poems in A Calligraphy of Days reflect Krzysztof Siwczyk’s wide-ranging and variegated style. Born in 1977, Siwczyk has lived most of his life in the Silesian city of Gliwice. In 1995, he became a wunderkind of the Polish poetry scene with his debut volume Wild Kids, an edgy and unsentimental narrative of youthful tribulations and urban malaise during Poland’s transition from communism to capitalism. Siwczyk’s poems careen down the page at great speed, relying on clever turns of phrase or an idea that illuminates a larger meaning. As in calligraphy, a meandering subterranean process connects meaning and memory, thought and verse. Teased to the surface, words and images emerge in rapid, terse, and precise bursts.

“The poet pulls to pieces various kinds of ideologies, possibly the most repulsive of them being the patchwork of consumerism and religion. Ever excellent in his technique, he takes aim at the hollow religious idiom and sets a ravenous language against it. Under such pressure, clerical paraphernalia fall into confusion. Deprived of the signified, they resemble dirty, forlorn bus stops with blurred timetables.”

—Marek Olszewski

“I have no doubt that the book is a breakthrough. And not only for Siwczyk and his work. I have the impression that it might involve a specific segment of contemporary Polish poetry. Revaluation? I do not know. I would prefer not to abuse the term. However, what we are dealing with in this poem is an attempt to sum up, organise, evaluate, and to look anew not only at poetry but also at real life and the life in words. A poet who has already written quite a few books (and not just poetry books) now begins to browse through himself. A poet who has already received many significant awards now begins to notice other orders which had thus far remained tangential to his interests.”

—Piotr Kępinski

“A new quality in the work of a poet of established literary merit, one recognized not only as the author of two decades’ worth of poetry collections and labeled as ‘the voice of the MTV generation’, but also as a literary critic, a cultural activist, a publisher, and even an actor.”

—Jury of the Koscielski Prize