Krzysztof Siwczyk

(b. 1977) – a poet, columnist and literary critic.

He took Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia, works at the Rafał Wojaczek Institute in Mikołów, lives in Gliwice. He contributes to Polityka as a columnist. He jointly ran television programs on books: ‘Reading Room’ and ‘Reading Is a Quarrel’ (TVP Kultura).

Krzysztof Siwczyk is among those authors who test new poetic idioms with each book. It can thus be difficult to arrive at an unequivocal definition of his writing. As a poet, he debuted at the age of eighteen with ‘Dzikie dzieci’ (Wild Children, 1995), which won him the applause of the critics, bringing a number of prizes (including in the prestigious Jacek Bierezin competition). This volume was a coming-of-age book, describing his childhood in a Silesian housing estate. Through sensual description, Siwczyk tried to speak of becoming an adult.

His further books – starting with the next one, ‘Emil i my’ (Emil and Us, 1999) – brought a clear shift in poetics. Inspired by the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde, Siwczyk begins to focus on the problem of expression and the very substance of language. This means we have epic poems in which the author uses extremely long and complex sentences to find places in the language where meaning ceases to hold, or brief works using phraseology of purely phatic functions – keeping up the conversation. In poems of this kind, we see the poet’s conviction of a deep crisis in the language, the inability to express oneself through language, and consequently, the tragic fate of the subject whose story must remain untold.

In the next book, he tries to find a compromise between a poetic of sensual description and linguism. ‘Zdania z treścią’ (Sentences with Content) is an epic poem, several dozen pages long, about love, travel and longing. The very title might suggest the book’s bipolarity. The first pole is the language itself, the sentence as a basis for communication; the second pole is content, for even if meaning cannot be expressed through language, not all efforts should be abandoned.

Krzysztof Siwczyk’s latest book ‘Ludzie z taksydermii’ (Taxidermy People, 2024), might be seen as a resignation from the previous efforts to grapple with the substance of language and return to a far simpler message, more based on trust in the capabilities of traditional linguistic expression than doubt in its communicative capabilities.

Krzysztof Siwczyk has received multiple nominations and awards, including a nomination for the Silesius Wrocław Poetry Award for ‘Koncentrat’ (Concentrate, 2014), ‘Dokąd bądź’ (To Wherever, 2015), ‘Mediany’ (Medians, 2019), in 2022 his ‘Krematoria I/Krematoria II’ (Crematoriums I/Crematoriums II) was nominated for the Wisława Szymborska Poetry Award, in 2014 he won the Kościelski Foundation Award for To Wherever, in 2017 he took the Gdynia Literary Award in the Essay category for ‘Koło miejsca/Elementarz’ (Around a Place/Schoolbook), and in 2022 for Crematoriums I/Crematoriums II he was given the Silesius Wrocław Poetry Award in the Book of the Year category.

For his role in the film Wojaczek, Krzysztof Siwczyk was nominated for the European Film Academy Awards (Paris, 2000). He also appeared in ‘Bluesmani’ (Blues Musicians, dir. Adam Sikora, 2000) and the multi-generational project ‘Czuję głód’ (I Feel Hunger, dir. Paweł Bogocz, 2008). He made the film ‘Wydalony’ (Expelled) with director Adam Sikora, based on motifs from Samuel Beckett’s work, in which he played the main role. The premiere was at the New Horizons Festival in Wrocław, 2010.

Since 2000, Krzysztof Siwczyk has been a member of the European Film Academy and Pen Club.