Dariusz Suska

(1968) – poet, alumnus of the University of Wrocław.

As a student of applied physics, Dariusz Suska made his poetic debut in the underground student magazine “Na Indeksie”. Since 1995, he has been working in Warsaw as an editor and journalist in the culture department of numerous magazines, and publishing his own poems and reviews. As consulting editor at the television station TVN, he supervised literature and screenwriting, as well as writing scripts for TV series.

Suska’s debut poetry collection, “Rzeczy, które były światem” (Things That Were the World, 1992), revealed his youthful fascination with the form of Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry. In terms of content, the collection was distinguished by the presence of metaphysical issues, and even touched on theology (criticised as “the theorisation of spiritual life”). Suska’s poems are essentially devoid of a sense of humour and always remain completely apolitical. He is particularly fascinated by the concepts of apokatastasis and animal salvation. He has devoted numerous poems to the latter, including in later volumes, which differ from earlier collections due to the likely influence of reading the works of Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz and assimilating his reflections on classicism.

In his later collections, Suska begins to experiment with rhyme – timidly at first, but more consistently over time. In place of references to key philosophical ideas, Suska’s poetry is peppered with personal reflections resulting from direct observations of the world, usually expressed through subjective description, often embracing turpism. This combination of fascination with ugliness and decay, metaphysical inclinations, and the need for formal perfection positions Suska as an heir to the Baudelairean tradition.

Along with a change in poetics, Suska’s later work is also marked by a sense of privacy, featuring childhood memories and the extremely vivid re-creation of 1970s Poland. This element, however, is neither an object of nostalgia nor the subject of criticism; instead, it constitutes the backdrop to a certain type of self-criticism. Reading Suska’s work, it becomes clear that he is accompanied by a constant feeling of guilt for all evil: both the evil he has committed, and the evil he has silently supported.

Death – observed from many points of view and in various manifestations – has always been an element of Suska’s poetry to some extent, but its presence becomes particularly clear in “Wszyscy nasi drodzy zakopani” (All Our Dear Buried), a dark and elegiac collection, although its overall tone can be considered both optimistic and Christian. Suska’s work often refers to paradoxes and tries to provide reasonable, effectual and poetically sophisticated answers to extremely difficult questions.

His poems have been translated into English, Czech, Spanish, Russian and Serbian.

Suska’s poetry collections “Wszyscy nasi drodzy zakopani” and “Cała w Piachu” (All Covered in Sand) were nominated for the Nike Literary Award in 2001 and 2005, respectively. “Wszyscy nasi drodzy zakopani” also received the Polish Association of Book Publishers Award for the best volume of poetry in 2000. In 2013, “Duchy dni” (The Spirits of the Days) was nominated for the “Orpheus” Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Poetry Award for the best volume of the year, for the Silesius Poetry Award, and for the Gdynia Literary Prize. In 2017, for the volume “Ściszone nagle życie” (Suddenly Quietened Life), Suska was nominated for the Silesius Poetry Award, the Literary Award of the Capital City of Warsaw, the “Orpheus” Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Poetry Award (shortlisted), and the Gdynia Literary Prize.