Wistawa Szymborska: Poems for our Time

“My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.“

Wistawa Szymborska, Under One Small Star

Awarding Wistawa Szymborska the Literature Prize in 1996, the Nobel Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

We are living through a fraught political era in which ecological succour and the possibility of peace may seem elusive. Can poetry offer a way to read the world that helps us be both engaged in and also derive some relief from the world and its troubles?

This single session study takes up that question, looking at two poems by Wistawa Szymborska, reading them together as a way of thinking about and through the times in which we find ourselves.

Szymborska’s poetry, written in response to the political upheavals of the twentieth century, perhaps provides a reflective space in which to dwell a little on the difficulties we face and also offer a unique way to be human within a world that is sometimes ill at ease.

In The Century’s Decline she asks “how should we live?” and in Under One Small Star she hones her sharp yet warm irony on all the recognisable shortcomings and monumental efforts of human life and endeavour and experience. She gives us permission to feel joy and to be inadequate to the problems of the world while still holding space with all these weighty things.

It is my hope that we can derive some succour from Szymborska’s words.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single two-hour study on Zoom led by Desma Lawrence
• Tuesday 21 January, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)
• We will read and discuss two poems by Wistawa Symborska: The Century’s Decline and Under One Small Star
• £30 for one meeting, including notes and texts