Konrad Góra

He has published the poetry collections “Requiem dla Saddama Husajna i inne wiersze dla ubogich duchem” (Requiem for Saddam Hussein and Other Poems for the Poor in Spirit, 2008), “Pokój widzeń” (The Visiting Room, 2011), “Siła niższa (full hasiok)” (Force Mineure (Full Hasiok), 2012), “Nie” (No, 2016), “Kalendarz majów” (Maya Calendar, 2019), “Dzień został w nocy. Wiersze miłości i z nienawiści” (Day Stayed in Night. Poems of Love and Out of Hate, 2021) and “W Chinach żeby ogłosić wiersz. Drugie echo wściekłych lat. Wiersze, próby i tytuły utracone prozą, eksperymentem i zaniechaniem 2021–2024” (To Publish a Poem in China. The Second Echo of Furious Years. Poems, Attempts and Titles Lost via Prose, Experiment and Abandonment 2021-2024, 2025), as well as the self-edited selection “Wojna (pieśni lisów)” (War (Songs of Foxes), 2020). Góra debuted as a book author relatively late, at thirty, but he had already been known in poetry circles. Requiem for Saddam Hussein and Other Poems for the Poor in Spirit featured enthusiastic blurbs by Anna Janko, Karol Maliszewski and Urszula Kozioł, who wrote: “Konrad Góra’s poems are distinctive, original, angry – not with an anger borrowed from other poets’ work, but his own, stemming from personal experiences and reflections”. In 2010 the poet received the Gazeta Wyborcza WARTO Award. The volume The Visiting Room was nominated for the Silesius Poetry Award and the Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Orpheus Poetry Prize (both in 2012). The well-known poem No was nominated for the “Juliusz” Upper Silesian Literary Award. It is a literary oratorio about the victims of the construction disaster at the Rana Plaza garment factories in Bangladesh, which collapsed in 2013. The work, dedicated to “None/other”, contains 1137 couplets, equal to the estimated number of victims. The volume Maya Calendar received the Silesius Poetry Award and was nominated for the Nike Literary Award and the Gdynia Literary Prize (all in 2020).

As an editor, he worked on Anna Świrszczyńska’s selected poems (2013, Biuro Literackie), was a mentor during that publisher’s writing workshops and co-edited the resulting anthology “Połów. Poetyckie debiuty 2013” (The Haul. Poetry Debuts 2013). In 2019 he co-founded the publishing outfit papierwdole, currently functioning as a cluster of sister imprints. As an activist he is associated with the action “Jedzenie zamiast bomb” (Food Not Bombs), with anarchist, anti-war, vegan movements and squatter collectives.