Julia Fiedorczuk
Psalm XXXI
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
I'm intuitively convinced that creativity comes from a wild place. That place, that vital source, is not exclusively human; on the contrary, it can be found where the deadly separation of human beings from the rest of the living planet have not yet taken place. It can be experienced in the area of the body/mind not yet colonized by extractive economies of consumerist culture. I like to explore poiesis, or making, as one of multiple, interconnected processes happening on the Earth: the poet is not so very different from a spider, an earthworm. My practice is not to write about plants or animals or other elements of what is called "nature;" instead, I like to write - and think, and live - with other earthlings. The encounters with others, both human and non-human, make us who we are. Otherness is thus both strange and most intimate (like gut bacteria, deciding "my" moods). I think of poetry as a form of practice, akin to meditation. In this practice one does not stand aside to look at "nature", instead, one experiences oneself as part of the process. As John Cage famously put it: "what right do I have to be in the woods if the woods are not in me"?
Photo credit: Albert Zawada
JULIA FIEDORCZUK is a writer, poet, translator, researcher, practitioner of ecocriticism, and founder of the School of Ecopoetics program. The significant issue in her works is the relationship between human beings and their planetary environment. She is affiliated with the Institute of English Studies at Warsaw University. She has published essays, short story collections, and six poetry volumes. The latest of those, Psalmy (Psalms), was awarded the Wisława Szymborska Prize, Poland’s most prestigious prize for Poetry. Her writings have been translated into over 20 languages. Her translator, BILL JOHNSTON, is a prolific Polish language literary translator and Professor of comparative literature at Indiana University. His work has helped to expose English-speaking readers to classic and contemporary Polish poetry and fiction. In 2008 he received the Found in Translation Award for his translation of new poems by Tadeusz Różewicz; this book was also a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Poetry Award.