News from Polish Diaspora Writers

I've had a heart attack recently (you can read about it here) and open heart surgery, and I've fallen behind on my blogging.

There's been a lot of news about the activities of Polish American writers and artists these past few months, and I know that if I don't get it out quickly I'll just get buried under the news that I'll be hearing in the next few months.

So, in no particular order:

Christina Pacosz's recent reading at the Montserrat Poetry Festival, sponsored by KMOS-TV in Warrensburg, Missouri, has been released as an audio file. You can hear 17 minutes of Christina's poetry by clicking here.

Jeremy Edward Shiok will be tracing the journey of his grandfather across the Pacific during World War II. Jeremy will be writing about his experiences and his grandfather's experiences with the US Marine Corps. The website devoted to this project is at Atoll: A Historical Journey to the Central Pacific.

Linda Nemec Foster's Talking Diamonds and Jehanne Dubrow's From the Fever World were finalists for the Book of the Year Awards.

Cherries with Chopin: A Tribute in Verse: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry edited by Maja Trochimczyk was reviewed recently by Alison Ross in The Clockwise Cat.

Mark Pawlak's latest collection of poems was published this spring. Jefferson’s New Image Salon: Matchups & Mashups is a surreal meditation on the American landscape.

Adam Lizakowski's "A Poem about the Rooster" won the $1,000 first place prize in this year’s Elma Stuckey Poetry Contest.

Mark Lewandowski has just published a collection of stories called Halibut Rodeo (All Things That Matter Press). He's also started a blog about the book and other things (mostly about Alaska at this point) at http://halibutrodeo.com.

Grzegorz Wroblewski edited the Polish section of the Cleaves Journal. It's available online. His MEMORY IS THE SAME AS IMAGINATION (I-IV)is available at the New Post Literate: A Gallery of New Asemic Writing.

John Surowiecki's play "My Nose and Me: A TragedyLite or TragiDelight in 33 Scenes," winner of the Poetry Foundation's first Pegasus Award for verse drama, will be published in the Midway Journal this June.

Phil Boiarski is the featured poet in the recent OFF_Anthologie, a new publication from OFF_Press, an organization founded by Polish expats and Englishmen.

John Guzlowski recently published two poems, "A Dog Will" and "What the Tower of Babel Looks Like," in a special issue of Convergence Review devoted to race. His book Lightning and Ashes has also recently been reviewed on the blog Venus Febriculosa. The review also includes his poem "Here's What My Mother Won't Talk About."



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The picture above is of a tree and a field in Poland.