Anna Adamowicz

(b. 1993) – a poet and a laboratory diagnostician.

She has published in magazines including “artPapier”, “biblioteka”, “Zeszyty Poetyckie” and “Wizje”. Her debut collection Wątpia (Innards, 2016) was nominated for the Main Prize in the XIX Jacek Bierezin National Poetry Competition (2013) and the Gdynia Literary Prize (2017). Her tome Animalia (2019) received the Wisława Szymborska Award.

In 2020 she published another poetry collection, Nebula, and one year later zmyśl [  ] zmysł (imagine [ ] sense, as Laura Osińska). Her 2024 volume Stłuc. Kręgosłup Tytanii Skrzydło (Smash. Titania’s Spine Wing) was nominated for the Silesius Poetry Award in the book of the year category; the author was also awarded the Stanisław Barańczak Prize-Grant as part of the Poznań Literary Prize. For Smash… and the poetry collection, Jaw (2025) (The Light of Day, published under a pseudonym) she was nominated for the Wrocław Art Prize 2025. She won third place in the competition “Browar za debiut” (2018), and was also nominated for the Václav Burian Prize.

One of the key building blocks for Adamowicz’s art is the language of medicine and biology. The poetic re-interpretation of scientific nomenclature is something the author has employed since her debut, and it invariably features in all her books. Another common ground is also the way she frequently refers to European culture and art, both historic and modern, low- and high-brow – modernist painting features right next to the songs of Zdechły Osa or Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Nevertheless, two closely related – albeit independent – poetic projects can be clearly defined in Adamowicz’s writing: those published under her own name (Innards, Animalia, Nebula, Smash…) and those she published as Laura Osińska (imagine [  ] sense, The Light of Day).

Her debut Innards focuses on the human body – its relationship with art, history, and the world. Adamowicz is particularly interested in people with bodily deformities and congenital illnesses. She concentrates on the relationship between the physical and the mental, visible and hidden, and also between the individual and the system. A similar set of themes features in the critically acclaimed and richly illustrated volume Smash. Titania’s Spine Wing, in which the poet explores the phenomenon of scoliosis in girls, addressing it on several levels: historical, political, medical and social. Nebula and Animalia are, in turn, connected by an ecological sensitivity. In the case of Nebula it turns to an experience of the extinction of people, as – having exhausted all natural resources – they embark on a failed expedition to conquer space. In Animalia, that sensitivity turns to observe the relationship between humans and their ecosystem. Although the topics addressed by Adamowicz are important to society, her texts are not coloured by banal, accusatory tones. Quite the opposite – the poet introduces complexity into questions found in popular discourse, illuminating their political, historical and social connections.

The persona of Laura Osińska, created to serve the needs of the collections imagine [  ] sense and The Light of Day, uses a similar poetic language. Here, too, references to medical terminology and corporeal themes are frequently found. The aim of these volumes, however, is to create a language to describe lesbian love, and to preserve the historical visibility of lesbians. These titles are among the key examples of Polish homoerotic female poetry. In order to do justice to the project of creating a literary depiction of love and eroticism which fully severs the links to a male subject, Adamowicz–Osińska makes use of the categories of similarity and adjacency, as well as imagining and deceiving. She explores the development of a relationship, from its start to its dissolution (imagine [  ] sense), and also a happy, stable relationship (The Light of Day), thereby positioning the lesbian experience not just as a singular act of love or a political statement, but also as part of the very process of creating poetry.

Adamowicz’s work has been translated into English, Czech, Irish, Russian, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Hungarian.