SMALL ODYSSEYS (Waterloo Press 2022)
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Maria Jastrzębska is a key Anglo-Polish and European poet and no stranger to exploring heritage and archetypal figures of family. In this new work she widens her gaze. Unable – or unwilling – to settle, her speakers are nomadic. The personal is always political, the political – unmistakably human. Whether crossing borders, both literal and intangible, queering or reimagining histories, these poems urgently question the present, startle and illuminate. She is equally fluent in prose poem or lyric as well as the extraordinary and quizzical language of Ponglish.
THE TRUE STORY OF COWBOY HAT AND INGÉNUE (Cinnamon Press/Liquorice Fish 2018)
In a landscape scarred by conflict, two women begin a quest for a lost child and a lost world of peace. Bound together by love and acceptance, their story and path interweave with fellow outcasts — people like the ever-suave Dame Blanche, Sister Asunta, martial artist and magician, Master Wu Wu, and the lost soul, Tulip — but whether peace is simply the end of war or something deeper is something they must discover for themselves.
A haunting tale, told in a series of visionary prose poems, The True Story of Cowboy Hat & Ingénue interweaves memory and yearning to ask questions that reflect on our past and, disturbingly, on our futures.
OLD KNIVES / CUTITE VECHI (Integral Contemporary Literature Press, Romania, 2017)
CEDRY Z WALPOLE PARK / THE CEDARS OF WALPOLE PARK (K.I.T. Stowarzyszenie Żywych Poetów, Poland, 2015)
Selected poems
Translators: Anna Błasiak, Paweł Gawroński and Wioletta Grzegorzewska
Editors: Wioletta Grzegorzewska and Anna Błasiak
AT THE LIBRARY OF MEMORIES (Waterloo Press, 2014)
At The Library of Memories leads the reader from the ghost of one room to another, via the senses and catching at fragments of stories. This is an invitation to examine not only individual, arresting memories — at once familiar and disturbing — but the process of remembering itself. How we come to terms with our own past and what collectively we make of it are questions running in and out of these uncompromising, vital and thrilling poems.
EVERYDAY ANGELS (Waterloo Press, 2009)
Maria Jastrzębska’s Everyday Angels leaves you to ‘expect only light’ from the marginal figures portrayed in the title poem and casting arresting shadows of narrative attention: paraffin stoves, parcels crossing borders, the everyday things thronging this powerful second collection of a poet transcribing from the fissure of Polish and English, translations of language and objects; and from one consciousness, one history, to another’s. Memorial and family – even familiar – poems frame Jastrzębska’s theme. Nothing is taken for granted as she scores her adoptive English with the memory of a Polish mother-tongue. This renders her almost unique in English. Only abroad, with those untrustworthy continentals and their borders, could one encounter such mutedly thrilling disquiet.
I’LL BE BACK BEFORE YOU KNOW IT (Pighog Press 2009)
SYRENA (Redbeck Press, 2004)
HOME FROM HOME (Flarestack, 2002)
POSTCARDS FROM POLAND AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCES, with artist Jola Scicińska (Working Press, 1991)
QUEER IN BRIGHTON (New Writing South, 2014)
Edited by Maria Jastrzebska and Anthony Luvera
This anthology is a culmination of intensive work by over 150 people who have come together to share stories, reminiscences and creative contributions since November 2012.
Throughout this time the Queer in Brighton project has been hosting workshops, inviting submissions and collaborations, collecting ephemera and interviewing people. Countless individuals have generously shared their life stories, memorabilia and photographs. Collectively, these words and images speak of how the queer communities of Brighton have made their mark, however large or small, on the cultural landscape of what has been called the UK’s ‘gay capital’.
The extracts from oral history interviews presented amongst this mix have been carefully selected to bring to life aspects of the broader themes of Queer in Brighton: ‘place’, ‘politics’, ‘language’, and ‘family’. We chose pieces that spoke to each other, whether in unison or in discord, aware that no single book can represent the diversity of all the queer communities in Brighton. Queer in Brighton, by its very nature, is a project that is impossible to complete. This is what makes it exciting and we hope the gathering of stories about queer life in Brighton will continue. We urge you to lose yourself in the charm and fizz, the heartache and questioning, solidarity and resistance, on these pages, only to find yourself again, inspired by the stories and the individuals who share them with us.