"How Should I Sing to You, Planet?": A Conversation with Julia Fiedorczuk
Join Brooklyn Public Library at Greenpoint for an evening with the Polish poet Julia Fiedorczuk, whose new volume of poetry, Psalms, translated by Bill Johnston, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
“A poet’s job is to write,” says Julia Fiedorczuk in the closing poem of Psalms. But she far surpasses that modest goal: this volume sings. Translator Bill Johnston masterfully captures the rhythm, cadence, and flow of Fiedorczuk’s Polish poems (included here on facing pages) for English-language readers.
Fiedorczuk was inspired by her readings of the original Hebrew Psalms as well as by the process of learning to sing. In her poems, she captures the heartache and joy of these biblical songs but in the context of modern life—addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity, the upheavals of migration, and, in her most recent poems, the return of war to Europe. Fiedorczuk writes of the natural world, the built environment, motherhood, brotherhood, and of vast and tiny passages of time. And as she does, she discovers a new voice, singing to soothe and inspire.
Julia will also read fragments of her new novel, The House of Orion. This is a story about a world plunged into crisis – both ecological and humanitarian – and about a woman who is trying to write about it, although her life is also falling to pieces.
This event is organized with additional support from the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Photo: Artur Zawada
Julia Fiedorczuk was awarded the 2018 Szymborska Prize, Poland’s most prestigious poetry award, for Psalmy (Psalms), and has received many other honors. The author of six volumes of poetry, two novels, a collection of short stories, and three critical books, Fiedorczuk is a professor of American studies and a cofounder of the Environmental Humanities Center at Warsaw University. Her poems have been translated into many languages.
Join Brooklyn Public Library at Greenpoint for an evening with the Polish poet Julia Fiedorczuk, whose new volume of poetry, Psalms, translated by Bill Johnston, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
“A poet’s job is to write,” says Julia Fiedorczuk in the closing poem of Psalms. But she far surpasses that modest goal: this volume sings. Translator Bill Johnston masterfully captures the rhythm, cadence, and flow of Fiedorczuk’s Polish poems (included here on facing pages) for English-language readers.
Fiedorczuk was inspired by her readings of the original Hebrew Psalms as well as by the process of learning to sing. In her poems, she captures the heartache and joy of these biblical songs but in the context of modern life—addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity, the upheavals of migration, and, in her most recent poems, the return of war to Europe. Fiedorczuk writes of the natural world, the built environment, motherhood, brotherhood, and of vast and tiny passages of time. And as she does, she discovers a new voice, singing to soothe and inspire.
Julia will also read fragments of her new novel, The House of Orion. This is a story about a world plunged into crisis – both ecological and humanitarian – and about a woman who is trying to write about it, although her life is also falling to pieces.
This event is organized with additional support from the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
Photo: Artur Zawada
Brooklyn Public Library - Greenpoint, Eco Lab 1 MM/DD/YYYY 60