Danuta Maślicka’s poetry evening, organized by Józefa and Marek Witas, owners of the Agora bookshop, was held on Friday, November 14, at the Wedding Palace. Danuta Maślicka has been associated with Bolesławiec for many years. She was a first-term councilor and served as director of the Bolesławiec Cultural Center for 11 years. She found the courage to publish her poems for the first time in 2005. The latest collection, “Conversations with the Sky,” contains both previously known and unpublished works.
The meeting opened with Stanisław Soyka’s song “Tolerance,” which served as a kind of motto for the artist’s poetry evening. Among other things, Danuta Maślicka spoke about how solidarity is becoming less and less visible in the country of Solidarity. “Tadeusz Różewicz wrote: once, words could be applied to a wound; today, words kill, words hurt,” the poet recalled. “People have scattered. There are few opportunities and ideas that could bring people together. Today’s meeting is a bit of a provocation—to get people to come, to meet. Not necessarily with me,” she told journalists after the poetry evening.
During the meeting, Maślicka also talked about her work at BOK. “Various things happened. Some people liked them, others did not. Those who never attended any exhibitions had the most to say,” she noted. “For me, the meetings we organized back then were extremely important.” At her initiative, such outstanding figures as Ryszard Kapuściński and Rev. Józef Tischner visited Bolesławiec. In one of her poems, the artist described her extraordinary, symbolic dream involving Father Tischner.
“I do not consider myself a poet,” she emphasized at the Wedding Palace. “A poem happens.” During Friday’s meeting, the author of “Conversations with the Sky” read several of her texts. Interpretations of her poems were also presented by Ewa Ołenicz-Bernacka, Małgorzata Juda-Mieloch (author of the introduction to Danuta Maślicka’s latest poetry collection), and the duo Pokojowy Roman (Kinga Pokojowy and Grzegorz Roman).
Inspirations
Anything can inspire Danuta Maślicka: an ordinary object, art (a cycle of poems about angels was inspired by the works of Janina Karczewska-Konieczna), a sentence overheard on the radio, or a report read in a newspaper. The “Portraitist” cycle was inspired by Ireneusz Dobrowolski’s documentary of the same title. The film is devoted to Wilhelm Brasse, a photographer who was forced during World War II to document the Auschwitz camp photographically. After the war, he never picked up a camera again.
Asked about her influences, she replied that she greatly values the work of poets such as Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Różewicz, Urszula Kozioł, and Julia Hartwig. She also mentioned that she had written a book about the 1980s. The text is titled “Znikopis.” Its subtitle contains the sentence: “Do you remember? There was solidarity.” As the author herself emphasized, it was a very important time for her—not only because she was arrested in 1984. “Those were years rich in events, charged with everything that was happening in Poland. If the book is published, there will be an opportunity to talk about that period,” she noted.
Why poetry? “You escape from loneliness, fear, and pain. If you give that feeling a form, it is as though it has fallen away from you,” Danuta Maślicka confessed. “Emil Cioran said that one should start writing when one has the courage to say something one does not have the courage to say face to face,” she added.
(GA report)