From 1999
The Smells of Evil Let them hate, as long as they fear. — from the tragedy Atreus, by Lucius Accius The secret agent of order. He would like most to sue the chaos of uncertainty. He places a teaspoon of obligatory jam into the mouth of a child. The assimilated taste is passed from mouth to mouth. The univocal believer has mastered to perfection the smells of evil. The valedictorian of the unenlightened star gazing at the sky of hypocrisy. Bound, however, to the black sect of night when he is haunted by the widow of good deeds who treacherously offers him a sensual coup d’état. |
Ewa Lipska
is one of the most important Polish poets of her generation. She studied painting at the Academy for Fine Arts in Krakow, and from 1970 to 1980 she worked as an editor at the Krakow publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie. In the 1990s she lived for seven years in Vienna, where she was assistant manager of the Polish Cultural Foundation. She debuted as a poet in 1967 with the collection Wiersze (Poems), and from then until 1978 she published four more collections, from Drugi zbior wierszy (The Second Poetry Collection) up to Piaty zbior wierszy (The Fifth Poetry Collection). She has now published more than twenty poetry collections and several anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection Pomarańcza Newtona (Newton’s Orange) was published in 2007, and her first novel, Sefer, in 2009. Lipska’s work has been awarded various literary prizes and her books have been translated into fifteen languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Hebrew. |