With a fresh and lively look, new writers, lots of reviews and book news, plus great features, CR blends topics light and serious, old and new, all of them focusing – or merely touching upon – something Polish, but not necessarily from a Polish perspective.
A tsunami of honours fell upon Bill Johnston in 2012. CR surfs on that giant wave with a few observations of its own, along with some from Tamara Trojanowska and from students who will never forget him.
Lots of honors and awards for books – all reviewed in CR. Plus: An artist comes home; Elgar for the musically inclined; Manya, the Living History of Maria Skłodowska-Curie; and a beer named for Wojtek the Soldier Bear.
• Polish-German Relations
• “Ice Warriors” – Poland’s Adam Mickiewicz Institute publishes its first comic book
• Quo Vadis 2012 in Calgary, Canada
• “Freedom Climbers” author Bernadette McDonald in Montreal + Ottawa
• The Slavic Performing Arts Heritage Festival at Luzerne County Community College in Shamokin, PA – Writing Competition
• Bogusław Schaeffer honored in chocolate
• Helena Modjeska in chocolate and elsewhere
• A new element named for Copernicus
• Radioactive, a biography of Marie and Pierre Curie, a National Book Award finalist
• Jan Lisiecki, pianist extraordinaire
• Poland’s Prime Minister named European of the Year
Karen Kovacik directs the creative writing program at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Her books of poetry include Metropolis Burning, Beyond the Velvet Curtain, and Nixon and I.
Oriana, a former journalist and community college instructor, now teaches poetry workshops. Her awards include The New Letters Award, Felix Pollack Award, and a residency at Yaddo. Her poems, essays, and translations have been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry 1992, New Letters, Nimrod, The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Texas Review, Wisconsin Review, American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Spoon River Review, and many other journals and anthologies.
• ReJoyce: Rehabilitation Joystick for Computerized Exercise
• Volunteers Needed for the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum
• Alex Storozynski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Thaddeus Kosciuszko Park
• Side by Side: Poland – Germany, 1000 Years of Art and History
• Irena Sendler and Fatima Frutos: The 2011 Kutxa Ciudad de Irun Poetry Prize
• Code Name: Zegota: Rescuing Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942-1945: The Most Dangerous Conspiracy in Wartime Europe
• Warsaw Spring
• A Hint of Rain
• Quiet Hero
Congratulations to Vancouver Olympic winners Justyna Kowalczyk and Adam Malysz, but… do two athletes make a team?
An interview with Joanna Czechowska in The Guardian sparked CR’s instant interest in her book, The Black Madonna of Derby. Although her mother was English, Czechowska was raised in her father’s Polish community, complete with Saturday schools, scout groups and dances in the Polish Hall. Since her mother worked, Czechowska was raised by her adored and adoring Polish grandmother, who spoke several languages but none of them English.
by John Guzlowski
Kitchen Polish
I can’t tell you about Kant
in Polish, or the Reformation,
or deconstruction
or why the Nazis moved east
before moving west,
or where I came from,
Europamobil – moving Europe
Is Europe really as far as it seems to many Europeans? Not if you move it to where the Europeans are. This is the idea of Europamobil, a project organised by the Genshagen Foundation, which aims, amongst others, to promote civic dialogue between Germany, France and Poland. Students from different European countries travel with a bus, the Europamobil, all around Brandenburg, situated in Eastern Germany, for eleven days, visiting schools where they are to meet pupils of different ages in order to convey the beauty of the European thought – its diversity and plurality.
Wanda Koscia is the director and producer of the documentary, “Battle for Warsaw ’44,” about the 1944 Warsaw Uprising,
CR asks Dominic Roszak to comment on Canada’s policy regarding visa-free travel from Poland, and Andrew Nagorski for some insights into the American policy.
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