This volume of poems by Ewa Lipska, written over several months in 2005, comprises 21 brilliant lyric miniatures that form a surprising continuation of the volumes "Gdzie indziej / Somewhere Else", "Ja / I", and "Sklepy zoologiczne / Pet Shops".

Lipska - as always, a careful, tender and "merciless" observer of reality - writes more or less openly about our delusions and hopes, about human loneliness in the "elegant" world of united Europe, about love which one should always seek despite everything, about the past which worries and the future which keeps on surprising us.

These poems by one of the most original and most popular contemporary poets are truly like a "splinter" whose presence hurts because it brings home the truth about us, about the insincerity of behaviours, and about a sometimes desperate need for tenderness.

Source of Polish version: www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl/ksiazka

• Ewa Lipska
  "Drzazga / Splinter"
  Wydawnictwo Literackie, Krakow 2006
  123 x 198, 50 pages, hardcover
  ISBN 83-08-03837-9
  www.wydawnictwoliterackie.pl

The book has been nominated for the 2007 Nike Literary Award.

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"DRZAZGA / SPLINTER" BY EWA LIPSKA

[Excerpts from the described book are literal translations made for the purpose of this article; for the original text go to the Polish version]

The world in Lipska's poems is small and usually a sham. We have arranged it so ourselves: "A world made to our measure / under the short-lived fabric of the sky / it has narrow sleeves and a vulgar cap", we read in the poem "Na Mariahilferstrasse / In Mariahilferstrasse".

Lipska does not avoid contemporary, non-poetical props in her poems. Perhaps she even intentionally pulls the common world into poetry, a world too modern and - seemingly - not worthy of a poem. The images include logging on, a digital camera, easyJet cheap fares, the Airbus A380.

This need to have a poem include "civilian" words devoid of any sacred, poetic aura, but not devoid of strong, everyday meanings, this escape from inspired description into economical and non-poetical description, is certainly neither new nor coincidental in Lipska's output. It was present in the volume "JA / I" for instance, which included austere and rather gloomy images: numbered cities, streets in debt, a marriage machine that suddenly got stuck, a starting block, a banking newspaper, best-before dates, copyright. The titles of some of the poems were equally technical: "Warranty Card", "Answering Machine", "Our Computer", "Juice Extractor". Similar props also appeared in "Gdzie indziej / Somewhere Else", the poet's previous volume: a lawnmower, the iron of wheels, stadiums' roaring engines, text messages, a forklift, a nut and a spanner.

More strongly than previously, "Drzazga / Splinter" also reveals weariness, disappointment, maybe even aversion, though not in a superior way, towards various manifestations of the world. This world is out of shape, it has become sidetracked, and it chafes a little in its everyday, disposable, thoughtless version. This is the case in the poem "Miasteczko / The Town": "Summer from a Polish barbecue. / Abrasive heat. / In the market square a metabolic McDonald's. / The despotic smell of exhaust fumes. / ... Writing on an allergic wall: Gas the Jews". In "Noe / Noah", Lipska also writes about "humanity out shopping at Metro", elsewhere we read about the "liturgy of shopping".

Where does Lipska see herself, where does she find a place for herself in this deformed existence? Possibly on the fringe, away from the mainstream, because the mainstream, so-called normal life, is no more than gilding. In the moving poem "Ja - Oni / I - They" Lipska writes calmly: "I admire you / when you exceed the speed limit / and rush on like a telegram / ... While I / towed by a wheezing lorry / wave my testament at you ... And you / filled to the brim with youthfulness overtake me at the top of your voices / drowning out the engine's arrhythmia / and the worn pulse of the tyres".

In all certainty, however, and this is probably the most important feature of her poetry, Ewa Lipska accepts the order of things as it is. Who knows, perhaps there is even more to "Drzazga / Splinter" - a note of envy towards such mindless existence, maybe the poet would like to be part of it and not just observe it, though the world we have been thrown into usually irritates and chafes her? This kind of warm tone is found in the poem "Lekcja Poezji / Poetry Lesson". It includes a few important self-themed thoughts about writing poetry, but also the admission that mindless youth is right, and the hope that the writer may meet youth again: "I read my poems in a gym. / The inhospitable smell of sweat. / The rural afternoon flakes away. / Weird thing poetry. ... And they ask if I know / Texas Poker and will I log on with them / for another meeting".

Author: Marek Radziwon, wiadomosci.gazeta.pl, May 28, 2007 - Polish version

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