We are an emergency room
Will litanies arrive?
We are the house and the tree,
in somebody else’s story.
We pass the field of poppies;
we collect red graffiti,
sacred nouns,
red relics.
Psalms spread their tents
and light their cigarettes.
Ewa Chrusciel is a poet, translator, and educator. She has four books of poems in English with Omnidawn Press: Yours, Purple Gallinule (2022), Strata, Of Annunciations, Contraband of Hoopoe, as well as three books in Polish: Tobołek, Sopiłki, and Furkot. Her book Contraband of Hoopoe was translated into Italian by Anna Aresi and came out in Italy with Edizioni Ensemble in May 2019. Her poems have been included in curricula at institutions such as Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, Dartmouth College, Salem State University.
She also translated various authors into Polish, including books by Jack London, Joseph Conrad, and I.B. Singer, as well as book of selected poems by Jorie Graham (2013), and aforthcoming book of selected poems by Vievee Francis (2027), and selected poems of Kazim Ali, Lyn Hejinian, Cole Swensen, Mathew Olzmann and other American poets.
She is a Professor of Creative and Professional Writing and M. Roy London Endowed Chair at Colby-Sawyer College.
