Urszula Honek

Poet and novelist, alert observer and restrained narrator. One of the more sensual voices of literature in recent years. Her thoroughly romantic phrasing gently builds up a semi-Schulzian dreaminess while maintaining a unique melody.

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Urszula Honek, photo ⓒ POLITYKA / Leszek Zych

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Honek’s work is like strings set in motion – the initial strong tones dissolve into quieter and quieter vibrations. The author freely blends low and high notes, giving her stories an unhurried rhythm, allowing them to resonate properly. Perhaps this is why her publications are neither thick nor published too often. However, each of her books is met with recognition.

She came to prominence in the world of poetry in 2015 with the collection of poems Sporysz (Ergot). The debut volume reached the finals of the K.I. Gałczyński Poetry Prize (‘Orpheus’ category for the best volume of the year) and was nominated in the National Literary Competition ‘Golden Mean of Poetry’. Three years later, the collection Pod Wezwaniem (Under the Call) was also a finalist for the Orpheus Prize and was awarded the title of Kraków Book of the Month. In 2021, Honek sealed her literary position with Zimowanie (Wintering), earning another Orpheus nomination, as well as a nomination for the Gdynia Literary Award, and for which she was awarded the Stanisław Barańczak Scholarship as part of the Poznań Literary Award. Honek also received the Adam Włodek Award for writing the short story collection titled White Nights (Białe Noce).

Book cover of Urszula Honek's White Nights, photo: Wydawnictwo Czarne

The stories were written in parallel with the third volume of poetry (one of the works bears the same title), so some of the characters may seem familiar. In none of her books does Honek go beyond the familiar rural landscape. Born in 1987, the author comes from Racławice near Gorlice, and the Beskid Niski provides the setting for the tangled fates of the characters, who experience their own private ends of the world. Shrouded in darkness and mystery, White Nights is a kind of afterimage of childhood, stories once observed and heard by the author are reflected in her prose. This translation, however, does not take place on a one-to-one scale. Snippets of reality gain a more plastic and juicy form in literature. In an interview with the monthly magazine Znak, Honek said:

I am looking for stories that go beyond the biographical context and become universal. I like language that is sensual and yet not devoid of concreteness. I am a devotee of cinema, which is perhaps why I want to feel that the writer creates a world and characters that then stay with me for a long time (and even appear in my dreams).

Both the author’s prose and poetic stories are draped in dreaminess, where a fairy-tale world intrudes into the everyday reality of provincial life. Madness mixes with the suffering of people and animals, and there is an echo of romantic folklore in Honek’s sensitivity to the surrounding nature. Wojciech Bonowicz summarised her lyrical work in the following way:

This may sound like a paradox: after all, Honek’s poems are primarily about leaving, saying goodbye, loss, absence. And yet it is permanence – permanence understood as the opposite of exhaustion and passing – that ultimately comes to the fore in them.

In White Nights, there is even more of this death and emptiness, and the absence is often based on understatement, conjecture and nuance scattered throughout the collection. Honek writes sensitively, but avoids cheap sentimentality. She is closer to minimalism than ornate language, closer to a sketch than exaggerated imagery. The stories, though subdued, are saturated with sensual feelings, which heightens the experience of depth, of an unmediated sensation. Using the concrete, the author creates a multi-layered world observed from different perspectives: that of a woman, a man and a child. They complement and exclude each other, and this dissonance can also be seen at times in the language, when Honek covers suffering with bitter jokes and treats ultimate matters with velvety language.

Honek was the winner of the Grand Prix of the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Competition. She was the recipient of a scholarship from the Maria Anna Siemieńska ‘Grazella’ Foundation and Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. She has published her texts in Twórczość, Dwutygodnik and Kwartalnik Filmowy, among others. White Nights brought the author nominations for the international award Premio Grand Continent 2022 and a Polityka Passport. In 2024, Honek’s White Nights, translated by Kate Webster, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

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