Grzegorz Wróblewski


Potato Crop

The parish priest falls asleep over a book on turbulent
motions of matter. Could this fieldstone,

on which dappled birds rest,
have once been a strongman in the circus?

You haven’t changed much – I console him.
Look! The others ended up as potatoes.

My Life With Ann 3



Island 

Shells have been entering triangles since morning. 
Stocks with grey fruit

grew in the evening in the middle of our bedroom.
You were reading Wu Ching, and I Doctor Dolittle’s Circus.


Lords of the Night

They’re no bandits, they’re rather old bats 
cowering in fright.

They furtively pull out their hip flasks,

women prod their groins
with pink umbrellas.


(All poems translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski.)

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdansk and grew up in Warsaw, Poland. Since 1985 he has lived in Copenhagen. He has published ten volumes of poetry and two collections of short prose pieces in Poland; three books of poetry, a book of oetic prose and an experimental novel (translations) in Denmark; and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Mostar 2002). He has also published a selection of plays. His work has been translated into eight languages.

Otoliths recently published his A Marzipan Factory – new and selected poems.

Adam Zdrodowski, born in 1979, poet and translator, is preparing his PhD on Elizabeth Bishop. His translations include Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein, prose pieces by Raymond Roussel and William S. Burroughs as well as poems by James Schuyler and Mark Ford. His poems have appeared in: Odra, Dwukropek and Dziennik portowy. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Przygody, etc. (2005, Adventures, etc.) and Jesień Zuzanny (2007, Susanna’s Autumn). He was the translator into English of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s A Marzipan Factory. He lives in Warsaw.

 
 
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