Keff is a highly original and individualistic poet, who publishes quite rarely. She is known to a narrow circle of readers, but highly appreciated by them. Her poems are complex narrations oscillating between the world of dreams and sharply sketched historical and social reality. Karol Maliszewski called them lyrical and philosophical journeys through time. On her journeys, the poet identifies with female and male characters, and lives their real or hypothetical lives. In a poem Opiekun / Guardian, which features the story a Jewish writer Lejb Goldin living in the ghetto in Warsaw, the poet writes: "filtering his story through myself / I must finally acknowledge / the extremity, insolubility / of that reality. / And not only of that one".
She studied Polish Studies and Philosophy at the University of Warsaw, where she now lectures at the Gender Studies Department. Aside her poetic books, she is also the author of a literary study Postać z cieniem. Portrety Żydówek w polskiej literaturze od końca XIX wieku do 1939 roku/ Figure With a Shadow. Portraits of Jewesses in Polish Literature from the End of the 19th Century to 1939 (2001) and a collection of critical texts Barykady. Kroniki obsesyjne lat 2000-2006/ Barricades. Obsessive Chronicles of 2000-2006 (2006). Her essays and opinion articles have been published in such newspapers and journals as, among others, Res Publica Nowa, Gazeta Wyborcza, Ex Libris, Twórczość, Kresy, Midrasz, and Zadra. She is also a film critic.
Utwór o matce i ojczyźnie/ On Mother and Fatherland won instant and widespread recognition, referred to as "a mixture of opera, tragedy and oratory", "a life story of a Mother saved from the Holocaust and her Daughter, whom the Mother imprisoned in her suffering". The act of undertaking such a difficult and sensitive subject as well as the ability to express it in an innovative and totally original form confirm the important position that Bożena Keff holds in the Polish contemporary poetry.
In 2013 her essay Antysemityzm. Niezamknięta historia / Antisemitism. An Unfinished Story was published. The author faces one of the most painful problems of Polish history. The book - as Umińska-Keff said herself - was supposed to be as accessible as possible, for she wanted it to be read by students. It was thought out as a sort of 'manual', which would explain, what antisemitism is, which mechanisms started it and what we can do about it.
It's a text bordering on philosophy of culture. I speak about what is immanently written in christian cultures, Polish culture included. I try to find reactions engraved in culture. I am not a historian, so I had to rewrite history as told by others, but I focus on a cultural pattern, a certain mechanism - she said in an interview by Tomasz Stawiszyński ("Dziennik Opinii", 19.11.2013).
Bibliography:
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Razem Osobno / Apart Together, "Czytelnik", Warsaw 1986;
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Sen o znaczeniu snów/ A Dream About the Significance of Dreams, Wydawnictwo "Przedświt", Warsaw 1994;
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Nie jest gotowy / It’s Not Ready, OPEN Wydawnictwo Naukowe i Literackie, Warsaw 2000;
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Utwór o matce i ojczyźnie/ On Mother and Fatherland (afterword by: Maria Janion, Izabela Filipiak), Korporacja Ha!art, Kraków 2008.
- Antysemityzm. Nie zamknięta historia", Czarna Owca, Warszawa 2013.
Author: Krystyna Dąbrowska, October 2008; updated by NMR, December 2016.
This article is part of the Internet project of Antologia polskiej poezji od Średniowiecza do wieku XXI/ Anthology of the Polish Poetry from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century based on the concept of Piotr Matywiecki.