"No one is born a poet without pain," writes acclaimed Polish poet
Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki. In Peregrinary, a selection from his nine
volumes of poetry to date, Tkaczyszyn-Dycki offers deeply personal
meditations on suffering and dying, and on the dead and our relationship
with them. At the same time and in an unmistakable poetic voice, he
interweaves his autobiography, combining spirituality, eroticism, and
nostalgia to create a unique narrative of travel, sickness, and the
poet's place. The book's title refers to the itinerary of the pilgrim
and relates both to the real journeys and the metaphorical ones of the
writer's own life, in which he has chosen "poetry as a place on earth."
Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki was born in 1962 in southeastern Poland
close to the Ukrainian border. The author of nine collections of poetry,
he has won numerous literary prizes both in Poland and elsewhere,
including the prestigious Kazimiera Illakowiczówna Prize, the Barbara
Sadowska Prize, and Germany's Hubert Burda Prize. His work has
previously appeared in various English-language journals as well as in
the Zephyr Press anthology Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird.
Peregrinary is his first book-length publication in English.
Bill Johnston has held translation fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; in
2005, he won the translation award of the American Association of
Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) for his
rendering of Magdalena Tullis prose poem Dreams and Stones. He teaches
literary translation at Indiana University, where he is also director of
the Polish Studies Center.
