Marcin Mokry

(b. 1980) – a poet, curator and animator of the literary scene.

An author of experimental poetry, partly akin to Concretism. His poetry works through the twentieth-century poetry avant-garde traditions in a way the critics have called new and refreshing. Mokry himself has described the relationship of his work to the avant-garde with a comparison to pyrophytes – plants that grow in a forest only when it has burned down.

He debuted in 2017 with the volume ‘czytanie. Pisma’ (reading: Writings). In 2019, he released ‘Świergot’ (Twitter), an epic described as the ‘score of a poem’ by Rafał Wawrzyńczyk or ‘cartographic poems’ by Piotr Bogalecki – joining an intimate perspective of a father raising two children with the traumatic experiences of history as such, above all the Holocaust and the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the author applied an innovative topographic design and an avant-garde poetic based on a construction of fragments and scraps of conversation, thoughts and press reports.

Three years later, he published ‘żywe linie, nowe usta’ (live lines, new mouth), also using tactics of concrete poetry, complex typographical layouts and a mockumentary frame to tell the story of Janusz Zimny, an aged electrician living in a care home, who declares himself the reincarnation of the ‘pope of the Polish avant-garde’, Tadeusz Peiper. Through this protagonist, Mokry again grapples with the traumatic experiences of modernity.

Marcin Mokry graduated in philosophy from the University of Silesia. In 2006–22, he taught ethics at the Evangelical A. Schweitzer School Complex in Gliwice. Since 2019, he has created (with Karolina Wiśniewska) a sociocultural project, ‘Dings’, to create a subjective atlas of a place with its residents; ‘Dings’ had an edition at the Góry Literatury Festival in Nowa Ruda and at the world’s largest art book fair, LA ART. BOOK FAIR, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (USA). The project was also released in a post-competition publication of The Social Art Award in 2019 in Berlin. Since 2015, Mokry has been a curator of the Slot Art Festival literary stage.

He was honoured with the Wiesław Kazanecki Mayor of the City of Białystok Literary Award in 2022 in the Book of the Year category for live lines, new mouth, third place in the Artur Fryz Polish Literary Competition for best poetry debut of 2017 for reading: Writings and a prize in the Polish Graphic Design Awards in the Belles Artes/Reportage category in 2020 for Twitter. In 2020, he was nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award, twice nominated for the Main Prize of the Jacek Bierezin Polish Poetry Competition (in 2015 in the Audience Award category, and in 2016 in the Special Award category). In 2019, he took first place in the 5^th Tomek Pułka Tournament of One Poem.

Mokry’s writings have appeared in Jakub Kornhauser’s anthologies, ‘Żeby ten wiersz był pudełkiem zapałek. Obiektywizm w polskiej poezji. 97 wierszy’ (May This Poem Be a Matchbox: Objectivism in Polish Poetry, 97 Poems) and ‘Równo z prawej. Antologia polskiego poematu prozą’ (Straight from the Right: An Anthology of Polish Prose Epics), as well as in ‘Pośrodku dzikiego boiska. Antologia wierszy poetek i poetów Złotego Środka 2005–2024’ (In the Middle of a Wild Field: An Anthology of Golden Mean Poets, 2005–24). A fragment of Twitter appeared in ‘Tradycje eksperymentu / eksperyment jako doświadczenie’ (Traditions of Experimentation/Experimentation as an Experience), edited by Krzysztof Hoffman, Jakub Kornhauser and Barbara Sienkiewicz.