Agata’s dream
a woman was carrying a bundle,
in the bundle were dead children
and a wooden head, a memento.
a wooden bell. at times what you need to know about a dream
is what you know about death – inside that head,
slanting script, the selling of rags
and belongings, abrupt struggle with relief,
drunkenness, but that’s another map,
equally kind. like a fin
before it emerges from water,
takes the shape of papillary lines
and starts counting coins in the pockets. or
else – she’s not
in my eye, looking, smooth,
as if i bought the eye in a shop
and stuffed dirt into it, that history
of the most difficult translation:
i – you.
accidental discovery:
people die.
night’s blueprint of me
and dying i’d be afraid of three things:
that which was always as if beyond me,
that one day i’ll be claimed by another speech,
and that i’ve lived exclusively for myself,
but night, in which absentmindedly i dipped my hands
was the beginning and end of not my body
and it invented a blueprint of me –
in the night there’re several me’s
Roman Honet (b. 1974) has published nine volumes of poetry, most recently: pamięć niczyja, ciało moje [nobody’s memory, my body] (2024), as well as two selected editions: moja [mine] (2008) and rozmowa trwa dalej [the conversation continues] (2016). Editor of the anthology Poeci na nowy wiek [Poets for a New Century] (2010), co-editor of Antologia nowej poezji polskiej 1990-2000 [Anthology of New Polish Poetry 1990–2000] (2004). Winner of the Wisława Szymborska Award in 2015 for the volume świat był mój [the world was mine]. His poetry was translated into Czech, Spanish, Lithuanian, Latvian, German, Norwegian, Slovenian, and English. In recent years a selection of his poetry has appeared in Russian as Месса Лядзинского [The Mass of Ladziński] (trans. Sergei Moreino, Moscow, 2017), a volume in Ukrainian as Світ належав мені (trans. Yurii Zavadskyi, Ternopil, 2019), a Serbian edition as Svet je bio mój (trans. Biserka Rajčić, Belgrade, 2021), and a selection of poems in Latvian, Kauns un ķirši [shame and cherries] (trans. Sergei Moreino, Riga: Literatūras Kombains, 2026).
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese writes with/in English, Polish and Danish. Her visual poetry publications include preter/natural appetite for chalk (intergraphia, 2025) and convers(at)ion: sea fog chalk (Essence Press, 2024). Among her Polish poetry translations are: Song at Half Past Three (Wojciech Bonowicz; Literary Waves, 2026), Night Truck Driver (Marcin Świetlicki; Zephyr Press, 2020; longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Poetry in Translation Award longlist, finalist for the 2020 Big Other Book Award for Translation.); Salt Monody (Marzanna Kielar; Zephyr Press, 2006). She co-curates and runs ‘Transreading’ courses on translocal and hybrid poetries for the Poetry School in London. Her site-specific verbal and visual texts, often zines and artists’ books, use botanical inkmaking, cyanotype, pinhole photography and expressive handwriting. IG: @elzbietawojcikleese
