Mirka Szychowiak

(b. 1956) – a poet and short-story author.

She lives in Księżyce, in Lower Silesia. In her highly autobiographical poems, she analyses the complexity of human relationships, her own physical and emotional experiences and the chances for communicating with another person. Her poetry has gentle irony, empathy, an often humorous tone and introspective reflection.

She debuted in 2005 with ‘Człap story’ (Waddle Story), for which she won the Golden Mean of Poetry Polish Literary Competition (2006). From her very first book, Szychowiak has based her writings on a communicative poetic with nothing superfluous, in which she makes space to contemplate the transitoriness and fragility of the subject. In 2010, she put out two more volumes: ‘Jeszcze się tu pokręcę’ (I’ll Still Be Hanging Around) and ‘Proszę nie płakać’ (Don’t Cry, Please) – for the first she was nominated for the Nike Literary Award (2011).

Five years later, she made her prose debut with the short stories in ‘Gniazdozbiór’ (Nestellation). As in many of her poems, Szychowiak eavesdrops on her protagonists’ everyday language – here the inhabitants of a communist-era block of flats – and collects their seemingly prosaic stories, which turn out to be filled with drama. The same year, she also published a volume of poetry, ‘Gustaw znikąd’ (Gustaw from Nowhere). The following years brought a marked turn towards confession from the perspective of an ageing subject. Jakub Skurtys has pointed to the alleged ‘uncontemporary’ nature of Szychowiak’s poetry, which ‘is worth reading for its sensitivity and confessions’. The critic points to her attachment to the ‘truth about the world’ that the subject may state in a poem, while noting, by way of 2020’s ‘Uwaga, obiekt monitorowany’ (Attention, Monitored Site), that the goal of poetic reportage created by the author ‘is not the truth of reality, but the individual truth of the subject’.

Mirka Szychowiak has been singled out in prestigious literary competitions on several occasions. Apart from the aforementioned Golden Mean of Poetry and Nike Award, she has been nominated for the Wisława Szymborska Award for Attention, Monitored Site (2021) and the Kazimierz Hoffman Blackbird Poetry Award for ‘Poza zasięgiem’ (Off the Grid, 2025). Moreover, she was a finalist at the International Short Story Festival (2015), and took an award at the Wrocław House of Literature project, which meant for a month she was a resident at the Wisława Szymborska flat in Krakow. Szychowiak’s works have been translated into English, Spanish, Romanian, Ukrainian, Italian and Russian.