Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

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 video of 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.

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