Justyna Bargielska

(b. 1977) – poet, prose writer, translator.

Bargielska has had various jobs, including as a columnist for “Znak” and “Ruch Muzyczny”, a teacher of writing classes, and pet-sitter.

She debuted in 2003 with the poetry volume “Dating Sessions”, but published in the press even earlier; in 2001 she was a laureate of the 3^rd Rainer Maria Rilke poetry competition and in 2002 – of the special award at the 8^th Jacek Bierezin National Poetry Competition. Her prose debut was the 2010 book “Obsoletki” (published in English as Born Sleeping), which received many prizes.

Justyna Bargielska’s books are characterised by their blunt, sensual language and black humour, bordering on the macabre and the absurd. They are embedded in surreal, somewhat fairy-tale settings. Their sensuality, fairy-tale nature, absurdity and humorousness set her poems apart. They are inspired by her own experiences; Bargielska is interested in various aspects of human corporeality, mainly questions of motherhood, sexuality and death.

The experience of motherhood is the most frequently recurring theme of her oeuvre. In the volume China Shipping, it found expression in intense games played with language, which displays its creative power and the writing subject’s obvious joy as it creates a world of powerful, energetic proper names. On the one hand, these poems are based in reality, on the other – in bizarre, hallucinatory landscapes. In Born Sleeping, Bargielska speaks about pregnancies and miscarriages, facing up to trauma and revealing the mournful dimension of motherhood. “Dwa fiaty” (Two Fiats) were also defined by their melancholy perspective of loss and emptiness. The poet often used the word “touch” in the collection to invoke death and love, locked within the boundaries of sensual desire. In her seventh volume of poetry, the personal and honest “Dziecko z darów” (Gifted Child), she returns to the themes of loss of love, motherhood, and child loss. She perceives these experiences as the essence of a fulfilled life, and notices the spiritual dimension of the everyday.

Bargielska shows the subject of her poems mostly through the prism of sexuality. We see her protagonist in the roles of mother, wife, lover. Especially “Małe lisy” (Small Foxes) interweave fantasies about a femininity whose desires extend beyond society’s normative structures, one that literally searches for a murderer from a forest for herself – and the kind of femininity that conforms to patriarchal rules. “Bach for My Baby” is a lyrical version of the same story, where events take place within a love triangle: husband, wife and the other man. The amorous rhetoric in Bargielska’s poetry often introduces the order of the unseen, so it can be said that the poems also display a certain – more or less mystical – religiosity.

Bargielska intertwines the figures and values of bourgeois, patriarchal and Christian culture. Within this frame she discusses how the female subject relates to socio-religious norms. In these poems, the woman is a reflection of male fantasy and an expression of the desire for elusiveness.

Bargielska is also the co-author of the picture book “Obie” (Both), illustrated by Iwona Chmielewska; this tale of words and images features a return to the themes of motherhood with its various aspects and the accompanying emotions: joy, anxiety, the feeling of emptiness.

The author is a two-time laureate of the Gdynia Literary Prize: first in 2010 for the poetry volume Two Fiats, and then in 2011 for the prose book Born Sleeping. The latter was also nominated for Polityka’s Passport and the Nike Literary Award (shortlisting in 2011). In 2013, the poetry volume Bach for My Baby was nominated for the Silesius Poetry Award and for the Wisława Szymborska Award. The following year brought her a Nike nomination for Small Foxes. Gifted Child received a nomination for the Silesius in 2020, and in 2021 – for the Wisława Szymborska Award. In 2024 Bargielska was nominated for the Silesius again, for “Wybór stand-upów” (Selection of Stand-Up). Translations of her poems were also published in Serbian, Hungarian and Spanish anthologies.