The jacket of Tadeusz Różewicz's book has a picture of the knife his friend, the well-known art historian Professor Mieczysław Porębski had while in the concentration camp. ("It used to be carried in the seam / of your camp overall, / as they confiscated knives,/ and that could cost you dear.") This instrument, made from the hoop of a barrel, serves as the theme for the poem entitled The Professor's Penknife, one of the six poems in this volume.

"The poet, who celebrated his eightieth birthday this year, makes it clear in his new poems that he has less ahead of him than what he has already been through. The point is that what he has gone through, what he's seen, witnessed, and participated in gives him no peace. It wakes him up in the middle of the night and keeps on forcing him to think about it. The poet's memory is like an open wound." (Janusz Drzewucki in 2001)

Tadeusz Różewicz (b. 1921), an artist who defies definition and causes anxiety, a poet turned inwards towards silence and stillness. But he is also a classic of the Avant-Garde, a precursor of Postmodernism, a discloser of the inner experience.

• Tadeusz Różewicz
  The Professor's Penknife / Nożyk profesora
  Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wrocław 2001
  translation rights: Tadeusz Różewicz, rights available
  145 x 206, 67 pages, hardcover
  ISBN 83-7023-840-8