Kasper Pfeifer

(b. 1990) – a poet, literary critic and scholar of avant-garde poetry.

He published his first pieces of poetry in Kresy. He was the winner of The Hunt: Biuro Literackie 2013 project. His book debut came in 2019, with Adblock (SPP Branch in Łódź, House of Literature in Łódź), in which he plays with the tradition of courtly literature, not in order to ahistorically reproduce ready-made forms, but to look at late modernity from another perspective – as a subject declaring the need to enchant reality through myth, ethos, even if he is unheroic. In 2020, the book was nominated for the Wrocław Silesius Poetry Prize for debut of the year, and was mentioned by the Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna Prize for best poetry debut of 2019 and in the Artur Fryz Polish Literary Competition for debut poetry book of 2019.

In 2025, Pfeifer published his second book of poetry, ‘Zna swoje miejsce’ (Knows His Place, SPP Branch in Łódź), playing with forms of political poetry and foregrounding the category of multiplicity: a diverse, heterogeneous pack, capable of reorganising its structure.

He has published poems in such journals as Arteria, Kresy, Nowy Napis and Odra.

He works as a lecturer at the Literature Institute of the University of Silesia, he is an employee at the Centre for Research into the Avant-Garde at the Jagiellonian University. His main research interests are Polish Futurism, the politics of the avant-garde, and folk history and literature. He ran the NCN Preludium project Aesthetics as Politics: The Work of Bruno Jasieński and the ETIUDA grant. His book ‘Polityka i estetyka. Bruno Jasieński, awangarda, socrealizm’ (Politics and Aesthetics: Bruno Jasieński, the Avant-Garde, and Socialist Realism), was published by Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego in the Awangarda/rewizje publishing series and deals with the political dimension of the avant-garde work of a leading poet of Polish Futurism, using concepts developed by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. In 2019, he taught the history of Polish literature at the Ivan Franko Lviv National University and the Lesya Ukrainki Volhyn National University in Lutsk. In 2021, he took a scholarship from the Ministry of Education and Higher Schooling for outstanding young scholars. In 2021 and 2022, he took an academic research internship at the Institute of Literature and the MDRN Lab Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He published academic articles in Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich, Wielogłos, Amor Fati, Pamiętnik Literacki, Prace Polonistyczne, Colloquia Litteraria, Ruch Literacki, Praktyka Teoretyczna, Polish Journal of the Arts and Culture, Teksty Drugie, and the collective volumes ‘Obrazy nieobojętności. Szkice o zaangażowaniu w sztuce’ (Images of Non-Indifference: Sketches of Political Commitment in Art, 2022) and ‘Anarchizm: Nowe perspektywy?’ (Anarchism: New Perspectives?, 2017).