Edward Pasewicz

(b. 1971) – a poet, prose writer, dramaturg and composer.

In 2000, Pasewicz won the seventh edition of the Jacek Bieriezin Polish Poetry Competition for the design of his ‘Mat o brzasku’ (Mate at Sunrise), which was eventually published as his debut, ‘Dolna Wilda’ (Lower Wilda), in 2002.

Co-organiser of the Krakow Creative Collective and Krakoteka Theatre, he was also a member of the board of editors of the spoken-word magazine Gadający Pies in 2010–15.

In simplest terms, Edward Pasewicz’s writing is associated with religious/sexual imagery. A Buddhist image of the world, bringing a different gaze upon what is alive and human, and an evident homosexuality in his subjective confessions make this poetry an important testing ground. These are not formal experiments, however, as their essence is not in purely literary innovations, but in reformulating the whole context in which literature might operate. This is why Pasewicz’s poems are often highlighted in discussions on Polish poetry: they are associated with gay emancipation, eco-poetry and the capacity to experience religion outside the Catholic tradition. Musicality and visuality are important contexts for his poetry. Not just because Pasewicz composes and performs his works accompanied by various ensembles. Above all because his books are inscribed with the idea of musicality in its broadest sense. For instance, in Th the notations are a system that holds significance and emotions, just as much as the writing. The importance of the visual features of Pasewicz’s poetry are shown by the book-object ‘Henry Berryman. Pięśni’ (Henry Berryman: Songs), in which poems weave with photomontage and photographs, creating the effect of an album, while the poetry becomes one medium co-existing with others.

As such, Pasewicz’s works modify the traditionally aesthetic and social ways of apprehending reality. We might speak of a ‘molecular gaze’. This would favour a vision of the world that is close-up and concentrated. The substance of life, of the body, of the world is taken to pieces (into particles, tiny blood cells, light, subtle flavours and scents) and thus intensified, while the poems permit our gaze to cross the boundaries of the visible. At the same time, this hypersensory dimension of the poems links Pasewicz with visions of death that usher in the limits of seeing: the poem ‘Bajka’ (‘The Fairy-Tale’) from ‘Drobne! Drobne!’ (Tiny! Tiny!) ends as follows: ‘white bell-shaped flowers with a cadaverous scent / steal my sight’. Widening perceptual capabilities goes hand-in-hand here with the fluidity of many social boundaries. There is no way to isolate religiousness (understood in a very unorthodox manner) and sexuality (which requires recognition outside the patriarchal division of roles) from the non-anthropocentric view of the world that appears in many of Pasewicz’s books. His poetry project is wide in scope, and among is unquestionable merits is showing the human world and individual subject in a network, connected with various other worlds and non-human subjects.

Pasewicz has won many awards. After his victory in the Jacek Bieriezin Polish Poetry Competition he was honoured with the Young Art Medal in 2004, and in 2010, the Special Award of the Minister of Culture. In 2011 and 2015, he had scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. He has been nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award (for Henry Berryman: Songs, Tiny! Tiny!, for ‘Pałacyk Bertolda Brechta’ [The Palace of Bertolt Brecht] and his novel Pulverkopf) and the Wrocław Silesius Poetry Award (for Tiny! Tiny!, The Palace of Bertolt Brecht and ‘Och, Mitochondria’ [Oh, Mythochondria]). He was nominated, in 2021 for the Nike Literary Award for ‘Sztuka bycia niepotrzebnym’ (The Art of Being Unnecessary). For Pulverkopf he received the Angelus Central European Literary Award in 2022.

His poems have been translated into such languages as English, German, Slovenian, Serbian, Czech and Spanish.