An intimate journey through lost illusions of girlhood amid Poland’s postindustrial landscape, marked with abandoned socialist landmarks – and brought back to life in these poems
my bff’s howl
I saw the smartest girls of my generation
falling into the arms of hungry hysterical boys
I saw: girls transforming into the nakedness of porno actresses
and shaving their bodies of all expectations
my girlfriends ruined by back-breaking work
doing the second shift at home
angel-headed maids waitresses shopgirls
by the sides of poets who have nothing
and can’t even manage to fuck and don’t even try
holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the hole
I saw my mothers forced into drug
rides around the neighbourhood
into afternoons drinking stale beers
into listening for seventy hours nonstop
I saw my friends walking alone
in the streets of bytom looking for assholes
who got lost somewhere on the way back from the club
disappearing without a trace leaving behind only mess
leftover hash rolling papers promises of marriage
I saw rings for four easy payments
and bruises for five years of true love
The italics reference Allen Ginsberg’s footnote to ‘Howl’, which this poem takes as its jumping-off point.
silesian gothic
we listened to lana in the church pews the month
before our confirmation, there was an echo. was it
the phone, or the lack of headphones? and whose idea
was it, having us confirmed? useless specks of dust to society
at-large. in one stroke millennia go by:
he swung incense over us in its thurible.
the pissed-off sacristan snuffed out the sconces. told us to
get out, but we stayed. inside each of us is a need
for miracles, and in young pups like us maybe
even more so. these are the epiphanies of children
who don’t know the first thing about life. our bar
is awfully low, so give us everything, all
the tough stuff. ciborium. myrrh. altar wine.
the rest will come later. for now it’s miserable and
given our need for magic, disappointment slips in. the parish priest
doesn’t believe in us (not even our parents do). when we meet
in those small rooms we pray, watch movies, are given
juice to drink. but this is the beginning. there’s more to come.
hotel zlatibor, according to kana radević
I no longer dream of food and electricity, kana:
I dream of hotels and heavy duvets
round mirrors, marble floors
wainscotting, traces of formwork
dresses cut like the letter A
picture it, I’m not a child, but a diplomat, kana:
anouk architect, anouk urbanist, anouk president of a city of thousands
anouk delegate, anouk edward gierek, anouk jerzy ziętek, anouk old man
I’ll put a cauldron in khrushchev’s villa
I’ll give pavilion c-g over to the clusterfuck of powers that be
I’ll bestow the hat-shaped exhibition hall on the demonesses of the night
let them chew on the wreck of that floating cafe, the arizona, kana:
if there are other universes
then in one of them it’s 1967 now
pink light seeps in through the window
houses and cities have just been imagined anew
the house machine works as quietly as possible
artist entertainers with guitars sing about silly things
liberal democracy smells like a smoked chimera
I don’t want to dream of food and electricity, kana
I’ll dream of things that weren’t in places
where there was no place, in times that
everyone supposedly outgrew, like a fledging
that ends up in the bushes
Translated by Monika Zaleska
An intimate journey through lost illusions of girlhood amid Poland’s postindustrial landscape, marked with abandoned socialist landmarks – and brought back to life in these poems
Translation rights: Girls and Queers to the Front, girlstothefront.poland@gmail.com
Silesia is the postindustrial Rust Belt of Poland, where coal mining used to be king. In Anouk Herman’s collection Silesian Gothic, it is haunted by the ghosts of socialist architecture, spectres of abandoned Catholic girlhood, and the disappearances of bad boyfriends. A mythology of youth lost and illusions shattered, exploring family, sex, longing and our lives online. They write ‘the teenage girl inside me wants sour cream and blood’, yet also play with adult identities, writing ‘I’m…anouk edward gierek’, in reference to the former Polish communist party leader. Herman asks: What does it mean to write the past back into life? To inhabit a more idealistic time when ‘houses and cities have just been imagined anew’?
Roving the landscapes of their youth, Herman weaves together scenes from Katowice and the former Yugoslavia, and filters them through their unique voice, where queer sensibilities and nostalgic girlhood meet. Herman situates themselves in conversation with the queer poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Sexton, referencing and riffing off their work, offering a familiar entry point for our dreamlike encounter with these verses. Illustrator Tyna Tokars’s sketches – the scattered contents of a makeup bag, gravestones, and anime-inspired girls, loving and fighting – underscore the intimacy and intensity of Herman’s poetry.
Monika Zaleska
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
