Janusz Szuber

(1947–2020) – Polish poet, essayist and columnist.

Janusz Szuber studied Polish studies at the University of Warsaw from 1967. He wrote prose pieces during his studies, and also began writing poems from 1968, which – although they were well received – he destroyed. From 1969, he suffered from psoriatic arthritis, a progressive disease that left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Due to this ailment, he left university and continued his education through self-study. For over twenty years, his writing was a private pursuit.

He made his public debut in 1994, as a mature poet with a well-formed writing technique, in the pages of “Tygodnik Sanocki”, with a selection of poems from a collection titled “Apokryfy i epitafia sanockie” (Sanok Apocrypha and Epitaphs); the collection won first prize in the 4th edition of the “Gregory of Sanok’s Family Land in Literature” competition, organised by the Gregory of Sanok Municipal Public Library. In 1995, the first two parts of his so-called “pentateuch” were published: “Paradne ubranko i inne wiersze” (Parade Clothes and Other Poems) and “Apokryfy i epitafia sanockie”. Szuber’s poetic debut was published thanks to the support of his cousin, Grażyna Jarosz, who financed the books and helped with the final editing of the first two volumes of the aforementioned series. Three more – “Pan Dymiącego Zwierciadła” (Master of the Mirror of Smoke), “Gorzkie prowincje” (Bitter Provinces), and “Srebrnopióre ogrody” (Silver-Feathered Gardens) – were published in 1996. “He introduced himself with five volumes at once,” wrote Jacek Łukasiewicz. “And then that was him – Janusz Szuber, poet.” From then on, he published poems consistently – first the works he had accumulated over the years, and later new ones, on a regular basis, as soon as they were written.

Szuber’s poems were published in numerous Polish and foreign magazines, sometimes under the pseudonym Sebastian Rylski: “Tygodnik Sanocki”, “Głos Ziemi Sanockiej”, “Tygodnik Powszechny”, “Kultura”, “Sycyna”, “Nowa Okolica Poetów”, “Twórczość”, “Odra”, “Kwartalnik Artystyczny”, “Zeszyty Literackie”, “Akcent”, “Więź”, “Rzeczpospolita” (in the magazine “Plus Minus”, where he ran a regular columnist’s corner called “Czytane na prowincji” (Read in the Provinces)), “Voix d’encre”, “Archipel”, “Le Poligraphe”, “Books in Canada”, “Die Horen”, “The New Yorker” and “Poetry”.

The space of Szuber’s poetry is an extremely diverse landscape, existing simultaneously in time and beyond time, inhabited by the living and the dead. He uses his own distinct phrasing; where echoes of the masters – particularly Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz – are heard alongside his voice, these references are conscious and inherently recognisable. Szuber’s poems are a display of lyrical virtuosity and a testament to his attentiveness. The storytelling element is restrained by a form developed over the years, resulting in a style that is uncluttered and channelled. His poetry collections have a careful, sometimes almost symmetrical composition, with adjacent texts complementing each other, despite the fact that his newer poems sit alongside works written twenty or thirty years earlier. In Szuber’s poetry, human life is a metaphysical trap, although this is generally expressed in parentheses rather than as an overt statement. Whether we like it or not, he tells us, we live here and now, thrown into the world to confront our existence. We live in speech, and it is speech, supported by the mechanism of memory, that in a sense guarantees our identity. This guarantee is uncertain, but for now we have nothing better. Despite the fundamental, universally important and timeless issues raised in each of his collections, Szuber always maintained a stance of detachment towards himself, what he was doing and what was happening around him. He posed questions but avoided a didactic tone. Each of us, in the end, finds ourselves in a certain sense in the aforementioned trap of “here and now” – beyond which, conceivably, as Szuber wrote, there is “nothing in pure form, metaphysically and chemically at the same time”.

Szuber also authored studies and selections of poetry by Marian Pankowski (1998) and Miron Białoszewski (2002), among others. 1999 saw the release of the film “Sanocczyzna Janusza Szubera” (Janusz Szuber’s Sanok), directed by Jerzy Kołodziejczyk and with a screenplay by Grzegorz Gajewski. A year later, a documentary titled “Gdyby wszystko jest poezją” (If Everything Is Poetry) was released, with direction and screenplay by Paweł Sawicki, and another documentary was made in 2001 by Paweł Słowikowski, titled “Innego życia dla siebie nie potrafię wymyśleć” (I Can’t Invent Another Life for Myself).

Szuber, a member of the Polish Writers Association and the PEN Club, has received numerous awards and distinctions for his work, including: the Barbara Sadowska Award (1996), the Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna Poetry Award (1996), the Culture Foundation Award (1999), the Władysław and Nella Turzański Foundation Award (1998), the President of Rzeszów Award (1997), the title of Master of Polish Pronunciation of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship (2003), the “Orpheus” Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Poetry Award (2015), the title of Honorary Royal Citizenship of the Free City of Sanok (2017), and the Annual Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the field of literature (2019).