The poetic formation known as the "New Wave" or "Generation 68," which dominated the Polish poetic landscape in the late 1960s and 1970s, emerged in response to specific sociopolitical conditions, and in protest against the Polish literary scene that, in their view, neglected its public obligations. They called for literature that acknowledges "what is today the source of despair, enchantment, hatred, fear, love, and faith," expressed in a language "that lives in our brains and in our refrigerators, in which we make friends and establish relations, which distorts our judgments and helps us to lie." They were looking for a literary idiom to confront and denounce the conditions under the communist regime.

Jaroslaw Anders talks about the group's origins, discusses their literary concepts, and recalls the political and ethical atmosphere they helped to shape.

The talk will delve into works by Adam Zagajewski, Stanislaw Baranczak, Ryszard Krynicki, and Ewa Lipska.

The webinar is part of the Tadeusz Solowij Lectures of the Kosciuszko Foundation

Jaroslaw Anders is a freelance writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of Between Fire and Sleep: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry and Prose (Yale: Yale University Press, 2009) and numerous articles in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and other publications. He has translated several books from English into Polish and from Polish into English. In the past, he served as a writer and broadcaster for the Voice of America and worked in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the U.S. Department of State. He lives in Washington, D.C.  

Dr. Malgorzata Pospiech is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist, and photographer. She is an active published translator, including Arthur Penn in Conversations, 1992-1995 (appearing in 2011); A  Small Town, the novel nominated for Central Europe Literary Award in 2015; The Seventh Ring ( a novel) and A Notebook (a collection of poems) published in 2016; Ariadna's Labyrinth nominated for Central Europe Literary Award in 2018 and Fog Over the River Styx (2019). Professor Pospiech is in charge of the Polish language and literature program in the Division of Russian and Slavic Studies at CUNY Hunter College.