April 2021
Wisława Szymborska - Queen of Polish Poetry
National Poetry Month
Wisława was born in Bnin (now part of Kórnik), close to the city of Poznań, Poland. She was the youngest in a family of two daughters.
Since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her début in March 1945 with a poem “Szukam slowa” (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily “Dziennik Polski”. During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in the Kraków literary weekly “Życie Literackie” where the series of her essays “Lektury nadobowiazkowe” appeared (the series has been renewed lately in the addition to “Gazeta Wyborcza”- “Gazeta o Książkach”).
The collection “Lektury nadobowiązkowe” was published in the form of a book four times.
Szymborska began writing short stories and songs as a child and made her poetic debut in 1945. She married Adam Wlodek and the pair lived in a writers' collective in Krakow. The couple divorced in 1954 but remained friends. Alongside her writing career Wisława Szymborska has also held various positions working for literary journals, such as Życie Literackie and Pismo, and as a translator of older French poetry.
Wisława Szymborska's poetry addressed existential questions. It is unique among its kind and does not easily lend itself to categorization. Wisława Szymborska strives to illuminate the deepest problems of human existence, surrounded by the transitoriness of the now and everyday life. She weaves in the machinery of eternity in a momentary experience of the here and now. Her poetry is characterized by a simplified, "personal" language that is unlike contemporary language, often with a little twist at the end, with a striking combination of spirituality, ingenuity, and empathy.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1996 was awarded to Wislawa Szymborska "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
Her poems have been translated (and published in book form) in English, German, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian and other languages. They have also been published in many foreign anthologies of Polish poetry.
Source: Wikipedia and Nobelprize.org
Richard Gorecki Scholarship
We would like to kindly remind you that the deadline for Richard Gorecki Scholarship application is April 15th, 2021.
Please check what our last year's recipient wrote.
“Thank you so much for your generous support of my education at the University of Notre Dame. I am very excited for my senior year and truly appreciate the financial help you have given me over the years. Thank You so much!”
— Meredith N.
The Polish American Congress Charitable Foundation is formally announcing that it is accepting applications for the Richard Gorecki Scholarship for year 2021
To be eligible the applicant must be a citizen of the United States of America and of Polish ancestry. Applicant must be a full-time student enrolled as a sophomore, junior, senior or post-graduate in an accredited undergraduate or graduate program at a college or university, with a minimum GPA of 3.0 out of 4.0. Applicant must be a member of their local Polish American Congress Division or if none in their area, then a member thru the National PAC.
Applications and more information can be obtained at www.paccf.org, by emailing paccf@paccf.org, or by phone at 773-763-9942. The deadline to apply is April 15, 2021.