Twelve Stations (New Polish Writing)

"Although the past is a constant theme in Rózycki's work, the present erupts with no less urgency . . . he witnesses the ant-like unimportance of human beings viewed from a cosmic perspective."—Helen Vendler, Harvard University

The hero of the mock poem, Grandson, leaves his hometown of Opole, in the western Polish region of Silesia, to organize a family reunion in the Ukraine where his family had lived before World War II—before being forcibly resettled along with many thousands of other Poles. In this, his sixth book, Tomasz Rózycki talks back, both to history and to important literary predecessors such as Czeslaw Milosz and Adam Mickiewicz, in language that is as playful as it is masterful. Twelve Stations is a masterful work of contemporary world poetry by one of its most outstanding practitioners.

In 2004 Twelve Stations won the prestigious Koscielski Foundation Prize and was named best Book of the Spring 2004 by the Raczynski Library in Poznan and its translator Bill Johnston received the 2008 Found in Translation Award.

Tomasz Rózycki also has received the Krzysztof Kamiel Baczynski Prize (1997), the Czas Kultury Prize (1997), The Rainer Maria Rilke Award (1998), and the Joseph Brodskie Prize from Zeszyty Literackie (2006), and has been nominated twice for Poland's most prestigious literary award, the NIKE Prize (2005 and 2007).

Tomasz Rózycki is a poet, critic, and translator living in Opole, Poland. He has published seven books since the mid-1990s, including the Koscielski Prize-winning epic poem Dwanascie Stacji (Twelve Stations, 2004) and the sonnet cycle Kolonie (Colonies, 2006), which was nominated for a NIKE Award. The Forgotten Keys, a selection from his first five books translated into English by Mira Rosenthal, was published by Zephyr Press in 2007.

As well as his research in Second Language Studies Bill Johnston also works as a literary translator; he has translated numerous works from Polish. Johnston has a split appointment with the Department of Comparative Literature, where he teaches classes in translation and literature. Since 2001 he has served as Director of Indiana University’s Polish Studies Center.