Wiosna ludzi

The title of Miłosz Biedrzycki’s latest poetry collection echoes a reference to the Springtime of Peoples, or, as a reminder, the revolutionary national uprisings that took place in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. What is the “spring of the people” in Biedrzycki’s volume? In a sense, the concept also implies a rupture, but it is aimed at realising the possibilities of language, and thus awakening the creative potential of the reader. The volume consists of two parts: The finished page and The un/finish/ed page, and the very titles of the sections point to a certain duality that accompanies the presented linguistic communication. Its poetic function, so characteristically sharpened in Biedrzycki’s work, drives a wedge into the context and code, all in an attempt to rediscover meanings frozen in imaginative hibernation during the cultural winter of our time. The author boldly serves readers linguistic poetry, forcing, as it were, a co-creative involvement. It is impossible to read this lyric passively. One gets the impression that the lyric subject – in addition to his message – draws us in with linguistic interventions and draws out our thoughts to complete the poetic leaven. The finale of the creative process happens in the reader, who recalls something and learns more, entering unexpectedly into different paths signaled by syllables, contaminations and neologisms. Creative semantic cleavages make for high kinetic energy, and the acceleration of meaning particles gains even more momentum in our ego. What happens then? The “Egow / gloes” – in the words of Miłosz Biedrzycki, who uses an intervocalic castling in this barely two-word poem entitled “The Shortest” as an impetus for the liberation of imagination. Here is the “spring of the people”. Here is our linguistic awakening.