THE GREAT PLAN B (Smokestack Books 2017)
translated by Maria Jastrzębska
ISBN 978 0 9957675
Justyna Bargielska is one of the most distinctive and original young poets writing in Polish today. She has published eight poetry collections, won the Rainer Maria Rilke poetry competition, and twice won the Gdynia Literary Prize. Although her work has been translated into French, German, Slovene, Dutch, Russian and Czech, this is the first time that her poems have been collected in English. The Great Plan B introduces British readers to the work of a poet who examines, with forensic precision, the landscapes of quotidian existence, our disappointments and humiliations. Combining colloquial diction, philosophical enquiry and religious references, these poems are witty, tongue-in-cheek, both self-deprecating and macabre while death is increasingly present, implacable. You can never be entirely certain whether she is serious or joking.
Praise for The Great Plan B
Tiffany Atkinson:
Justyna Bargielska’s poetry is an art of fierce surprises. Poems that might look small and docile on the page are anything but – they soon reveal themselves to be rigged boxes of devilish wisdom, opening out onto a world that is both familiar and suddenly, unpredictably, luminous, frightening, or both at once: “Do you know what our odds are? Zero./ But I’ve learnt to play for time / as it’s the body no less which is left on the battlefield”. Bargielska’s flexible idiom accommodates the most intimate, absurd and profound aspects of our contemporary lives at an almost breathless speed. Like telegrams these poems demand to be read over and over. And Maria Jastrzębska’s razor-sharp, glittering translations now bring the full range of Bargielska’s extraordinary voice to an English-speaking readership. If there can be such a thing as a tender rallying cry, this poetry is it: “I’m not enclosing hugs, I don’t send kisses, I wage /war on all fronts. Write back to me asap”.
Jamie McKendrick:
These poems by Justyna Bargielska make the word ‘daring’ sound tame. They move at a cruel speed, or as she puts it with characteristically mordant wit “I’m not leaving you, shoes, I’m merely walking ahead.” In a fairer world talent as prodigal as this would not be allowed. Maria Jastrzębska’s translations are urgent and electric, and effortlessly manage to keep up.