Chemical Reactions

Piotr Gwiazda translating the Polish of Grzegorz Wróblewski

Waterproof shoe spray! First, it helped us
get rid of spiders.
The little monsters fell from the window,
coiled and disoriented.

Meanwhile I, their temporary master,
cried with joy.


Piotr Gwiazda is the author of two critical studies, James Merrill and W.H. Auden (2007) and US Poetry in the Age of Empire (forthcoming). He has also published two books of poetry, Gagarin Street (2005) and Messages (2012). His translation of Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Kopenhaga appeared in 2013. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has lived in Copenhagen. He has published eleven volumes of poetry and three collections of short prose pieces in Poland; three books of poetry, a book of poetic prose, and an experimental novel in Denmark (translations); and selected poems in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has also published a selection of plays. English translations of Wróblewski’s poetry appear in several books and chapbooks, including Our Flying Objects: Selected Poems (Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory: New and Selected Poems (Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (Zephyr Press, 2013), and Let’s Go Back to the Mainland (Červená Barva Press, 2014).