Poetry

Polska Poezja – read by actors

THE THREE POLISH BARDS

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) – national poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, professor of Slavic literature, and political activist. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is one of Poland’s Three Bards and is widely regarded as Poland’s greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a “Slavic bard.”

Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849) – Romantic poet. A major figure in the Polish Romantic Period, and the father of modern Polish drama.

Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883) – a nationally esteemed Polish poet, dramatist, painter, and sculptor. He is regarded as one of the second generation of Romantics.

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Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012) – poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Wisława Szymborska Foundation

Wisława Szymborska. Urodziny – text

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) – poet, prose writer, and translator. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980.

Adam Asnyk (1838-1897) – poet and dramatist of the Positivist era.

Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński (1874-1941) – stage writer, poet, critic, and above all, translator of over 100 French literary classics into Polish. He was a pediatrician and gynecologist by profession. A notable personality in the Young Poland movement, he was the enfant terrible of the Polish literary scene in the first half of the 20th century.

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz – (1894-1980) – poet, essayist, dramatist, and writer. He is mostly recognized for his literary achievements in poetry before World War II, but also criticized as a long-term political opportunist in communist Poland.

Jan Lechoń (1899-1956) – poet, literary and theater critic, diplomat, and co-founder of the Skamander literary movement and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America

Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska née Kossak (1891-1945) – poet known as the Polish Sappho and “queen of lyrical poetry” of Poland’s interwar period

Antoni Słonimski (1895-1976) – poet, journalist, playwright and prose writer, president of the Union of Polish Writers in 1956-1959 during the Polish October, known for his devotion to social justice

Julian Tuwim (1894-1953) – a Polish poet of Jewish descent. In 1919 co-founded the Skamander group of experimental poets with Antoni Słonimski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. He was a major figure in Polish literature, admired also for his contribution to children’s literature.