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I
Editor's welcome
Welcome back, to our second issue of
Trafika Europe
. We
want to help make it easy to find and savour some exquisite
works from the vast treasure we all share, of contemporary
writing from across the European continent.
Our Polish Nocturne begins with a chapter from
A Treatise
on Shelling Beans
, by Wiesław Myśliwski, one of Eastern
Europe's grand novelists. In wry, gentle, piqued prose, the
caretaker of a holiday housing complex in rural Poland
regales a stranger with tales from his life. We follow this
with poetry by Tomasz Różycki, chiefly from
Colonies
, a
sonnet sequence of startling craft and depth, showcasing
this poet on the brittle edge of Polish consciousness, loss
and healing, destruction and exile – and moving on; this is
one of the finest works of poetry from Poland in our times.
And check out our
animated videoof the poem,
Prayer
,
read by Ewa Chrusciel, which appears in this issue. In this
dense, incantatory work, in this litany of longing, an
English-speaking land is weighed against a Poland she's left
behind – even in the very differing syllables and how they
form on the tongue. We're pleased to introduce Polish
animator Dominika Jackowska with this video. Title page
photos throughout this issue are by Adam Pańczuk.