On the outskirts of our municipality, in Stara Oleszna, lives one of the most interesting residents of the Bolesławiec region – Ryszard Adam GRUCHAWKA.
He was born in Bolesławiec forty-five years ago. His childhood and youth were not among the happiest, partly because of his own actions. He completed only primary school. He started working early. He took on various jobs. He was a field worker, cowherd, bricklayer, carpenter, heavy-equipment operator and a miner in the Copper Basin. In the meantime, he also “did” his military service. And now?
He supports himself by working in the forest; he is a lumberjack. His personal life did not work out either, yet he says without self-pity: “I have never complained and I do not complain; what I have experienced taught me to distinguish the better from the worse.”
He began writing in the 1970s, “often pigeonholing himself together with his texts.” He is convinced that poems are like the days one has managed to live through or is living through: some are worse and some better. Everyday life, with its bright and dark sides, inspires him to write. Keen observation of the reality around him, and above all of people’s behavior. Sometimes it is a funny notice on a bus, a companion’s behavior over a mug of beer, and at other times a lady asking for a dedication in verse, or a grubby little boy offering to sell an empty bottle. He uses simple, yet highly communicative Polish. He wants to “reach” every reader.
His poems were published in “Kultura,” “Miesięcznik Literacki,” “Przegląd Kulturalny,” “Karkonosze,” “Nowiny Jeleniogórskie” and the Wrocław-based private literary quarterly “W kręgu Kieszkówki.”
He hopes that another, already third, collection of poems will soon be published. For our poet, however, this is not the most important thing. Income from publications, rather negligible, does not determine his standard of living. He writes whenever he feels like it. He often emphasizes that “the most important thing is to remain a human being to the end – one can be a poet somewhere inside”!