SCATTERING THE DARK
AN ANTHOLOGY OF POLISH WOMEN POETS

Scattering the Dark offers a lively selection of Poland’s women poets writing before and after the fall of communism. In eight thematic chapters, this book reveals how the influential literary tradition of Miłosz and Szymborska continues to evolve as younger generations turn from their country’s tragic history to a poetry of ordinary experience and language play. Publisher: White Pine Press (April 12, 2016)

A new anthology of work by Polish women poets Scattering the Dark selected and edited by Karen Kovacik, a poet and translator, and former Poet Laureate of the State of Indiana (2012-2014).

Poets:
Justyna Bargielska, Katarzyna Boruń-Jagodzińska, Marzena Broda, Ewa Chrusciel, Krysia Dšbrowska, Julia Fiedorczuk, Wioletta Greg (Grzegorzewska), Julia Hartwig, Bożena Keff, Marzanna Kielar, Urszula Kozioł, Agnieszka Kuciak, Mira Kuœ, Krystyna Lars, Krystyna Lenkowska, Joanna Lech, Ewa Lipska, Krystyna Miłobędzka, Agnieszka Mirahina, Izabela Morska, Joanna Mueller-Liczner, Ewa Parma, Anna Piwkowska, Marta Podgórnik, Krystyna Rodowska, Ewa Sonnenberg, Wisława Szymborska, Anna Swir (Œwirszczyńska), Joanna Wajs, Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało, Katarzyna Zdanowicz-Cyganiak.

Translators:
Stanisław Barańczak, Danile Bourne, Bogdana Carpenter, John Carpenter, Clare Cavanagh, Robin Davidson, Piotr Florczyk, Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, Bill Johnston, Marek Kazmierski, Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Czesław Miłosz, Leonard Nathan, Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska, Benjamin Paloff, Alissa Valles, Iza Wojciechowska, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese.

"Wow! What a book! American readers are well aware of the powerful tradition of Polish poetry that produced Miłosz and Herbert and Różewicz and Szymborska. Here is something else - the tradition of women's writing that flows out of the work of Szymborska and Anna Swir and Julia Hartwig and Ewa Lipska. This book also gives us a chance to see something else —the way this mighty tradition turns in the hands of a younger generation from the traumatic history of their country to a poetics of everyday life, of play, experiment, the poetics of a postmodern condition. An absolutely rich and appealing book."—Robert Hass

"Polish poetry is one of the great poetries of the world, and these cosmopolitan, multilingual poets speak to each other – and to us – across the decades, overcoming a great silence, redirecting the myths, reimagining the role of the poet, and the nature of poetry itself. Scattering the Dark is a useful, subversive, even necessary anthology."—Edward Hirsch

“Scattering the Dark is a stock of the human condition so polyphonic that it’s hard to believe all the poems collected here were written in one single country and language. This is a passionate, mournful, erotic book of astonished lives.” – Valzhyna Mort

The first book promotion was on March 24, 2016, at 7 p.m. in New York
The Landing at Industry City 220, 36th Street, Ground Floor, Building 2, Brooklyn, NY