Michał Książek

(b. 1978) – a poet, reporter, traveller and cultural scholar.

He made his debut in 2013 with a well-received piece of reportage, the result of several years in Yakutsk – ‘Jakuck. Słownik miejsca’ (Yakutsk: A Dictionary of a Place). Książek learned the Yakutsk language and created a dictionary in his reportage. Furthermore, he described the Siberian frost and winter in an evocative fashion. The publication was supported by Mariusz Wilk, who wrote: ‘I am confident that Editor Giedroyć would have been delighted. […] Joining linguistic/ethnographic notes and a reporter’s eye with his own experiences of living in Yakutsk, Książek offers a modern extension of the tradition of Polish research in Siberia’.

Just as acclaimed was his poetry debut, ‘Nauka o ptakach’ (The Study of Birds). The subject of these poems is everyday life in rural Poland, observed with an ornithologist’s insight (the poet defines himself as a ‘father, and a watcher of birds and roads’). Creating analogies between the world of people and birds, the protagonist focuses on the most important things that concern his family nest, and shows himself to be a keen observer of nature.

In ‘Droga 816’ (Road 816) Michał Książek tries to join what was best in Yakutsk and Study of Birds. The protagonist sets off in the winter (the season most often found in his prose) on a trip down Road 816, running down the eastern borders of Poland, and also along the cultural border between Poland and Ukraine. This is not standard reportage, it is dense and aphoristic prose, joining the author’s passion for nature with journalistic descriptions and a lyrical sensitivity. The transparent composition of Road 816 is based on miniatures of only a few pages, meditative reflections which make for self-contained pieces.

He has joined other reporters in collective volumes (such as: ‘Patrząc na Wschód’ [Looking East], 2018). His poems have been translated into Belarusian, Hebrew and German.

Michał Książek’s work has been awarded and nominated for Poland’s leading literary prizes. Yakutsk: Dictionary of a Place brought him a nomination for the Gdynia Literary Award (2014). For The Study of Birds, he received the Wrocław Silesius Poetry Award in the debut category (2015), as well as a nomination for the Nike Literary Award (2015) and Polish Golden Mean of Poetry Literary Competition (2015). Książek was honoured with the Wiesław Kazanecki Mayor of the City of Białystok Literary Award (2015) and the Gdynia Literary Award (2016) for Road 816, which was also nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award (2015), the Beata Pawlak Award (2016) and the City of Warsaw Literary Award (2016). In 2018, Michał Książek received the Orfeusz Mazurski Award for his poetry volume ‘Północny wschód’ (North East), and in 2024 he was again nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for a book of reportage, ‘Atlas dziur i szczelin’ (An Atlas of Holes and Cracks).