Tadeusz Różewicz, photo: Elżbieta Lempp
A special gala hosted by the Southbank Centre celebrates the British publication of Tadeusz Różewicz’s Mother Departs with readings, music and film by actors, poets, critics and friends
Featuring the acclaimed poets George Szirtes and Tom Paulin, singing maven Katy Carr, legendary actor Jan Peszek and his daughter Maria Peszek, the notorious singer-actress, the 25th of May is dedicated to cherishing the most celebrated living Polish author, the great "anti-poet" who has succeeded in writing poetry after Auschwitz. The evening is chaired by writer, editor and educator Sophie Mayer.
Tadeusz Różewicz (born 1921) is Poland’s foremost living writer. Remarkable for his simultaneous mastery of poetry, prose and drama, he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is an unsettling author who is impossible to categorise, a poet who has turned to stillness and silence, who rejects poetic accessories and is, one is tempted to say, a mystical writer. But he is also a classic author of the avant-garde, a precursor of postmodernism, a discoverer of inner experience.
Różewicz has been translated into over forty languages. The most recent English-language volumes, recycling (2001), New Poems (2007) and Sobbing Superpower (2011), were finalists, respectively, for the 2003 Popescu Prize (UK), the 2008 National Book Critics Award (USA) and the 2012 Griffin Prize (Canada). He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2007.
Mother Departs premiered in Polish as Matka odchodzi in 1999. Its English edition is translated by Barbara Bogoczek, published by Stork Press in March 2013. It is perhaps the poet’s most personal work, exploring the life of his mother, Stefania. A unique mix of prose and poetry, of the joy of life and the agony of loss, wherein Różewicz creates a rich and complex portrait of his mother Stefania and of her indelible influence on her extraordinary family. Weaving fragments from diaries, stories and notebooks – including moving texts written by his two brothers and by Stefania – Różewicz creates a portrait of their lives and relationships that is sometimes brutal, often hilarious, and always tender.
Here is an artist attempting to give form, even meaning, to life – and death.
Matka odchodzi won the Nike Prize in 2000, Poland’s most prestigious literary award.
The event is organised by Southbank Centre in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in London and Stork Press.
Event details:
Saturday 25 May, 7:45 pm
Southbank Centre
Purcell Room
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX
Editor: Paulina Schlosser, source: Polish Cultural Institute, storkpress.co.uk, 9.05.2013