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Anna
Swirszczynska (1909-1984) was born in Warsaw. She studied medieval
and baroque literature at university. Her first poems were published
in literary magazines in the early 1930s, but her first volume of
prose poems appeared in 1936. During the Second World War
Swirszczynska took an active part in the Warsaw Uprising (1944), and
it was her war experience which had the greatest impact on her second
volume of poetry Budowalam barykade (I Was Building the
Barricade, 1972). Her last volume of poetry entitled Cierpienie i
radosc (Suffering and Joy) was published in 1984.
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| Anna
Kamienska (1920-1986) was born in Krasnystaw, Eastern Poland. She
was first trained as a teacher and attended classes at wartime
underground Warsaw University. After the war, she read classics at
universities in Lublin and Lodz, and then worked as literary editor on
several periodicals. She started her literary career with a 1949
volume Wychowanie [Education]. She worked as a freelance
writer, and translator from Latin, French, Bulgarian, Russian, and
Serbo-Croatian. She original work includes fifteen volumes of poetry,
three novels, several collections of literary essays and many
stories and poems for children.
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| Julia
Hartwig (b. 1921) studied Polish literature in Warsaw and French
literature in Krakow and Paris. Resistance fighter during the war, she
worked at the Polish embassy in Paris in 1947-1950. Her 1972-1974 stay
in the US resulted in the series Americana. Her poems of the
1970s and 80s make her, according to some, a worthy rival of
Szymborska.
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| Urszula
Koziol was born in a small village near Bilgoraj (South East
Poland) in 1931. She studied humanities at the University of Wroclaw
and took her first degree in 1953. Her application for a place on a
graduate course was turned down on political grounds and Koziol was
sent to teach in several provincial secondary schools. She was allowed
to go back to Wroclaw and resume her graduate studies in 1956. Her first
volume of poetry entitled Gumowe klocki (Blocks of Rubber) appeared
a year later. In the 1960s she returned to teaching; 1971, she became co-editor of the well-known literary periodical 'Odra'.
Since then Urszula Koziol has been writing narrative prose, plays and
literary essays.
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Halina Poswiatowska (1935-1967) studied
philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. In 1958
Poswiatowska went to the United States to undergo heart surgery. During
her prolonged stay in the United States she continued her studies at
Smith College, Northampton. On her return to Poland she was appointed
lecturer in philosophy at the Jagiellonian University, but much of her
time was spent in hospitals and medical centers, in a constant
expectation of death, which took her away in 1967. She published three
volumes of poetry.
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Ewa Lipska (b. 1945) wrote her first poem at
fifteen. She studied art history and painting at the Krakow Academy of
Fine Arts. Her first volume of poetry appeared in 1967. Her 6-month stay
in America gave rise to Piaty zbior wierszy [Fifth Volume of
Poetry]; her work has been translated into all major European languages;
English translations of her poetry won her the Robert Graves Foundation
Prize in 1978. Since 1991, Ewa Lipska has been Director of the Polish
Institute and Secretary of Polish Embassy in Vienna, Austria.
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