Found in Translation winner tackles Różewicz

Sobbing Superpower

The prize, which will be officially presented on 26 October, is Poland's most prestigious award for translators of Polish literature.

Trzeciak's almost 400-page volume, Sobbing Superpower, gives a broad cross-section of Różewicz’s writing, starting with his debut collection Anxiety dating from 1947.

The critic Edward Hirsch wrote in the preface that “Joanna Trzeciak's new translation displays Różewicz''s supernatural simplicity, his stark diction and sudden turns.”

At 91, Różewicz endures as the most prominent among Poland’s living poets.

Joanna Trzeciak is currently associate professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University in Ohio.

Her translations of Polish works include Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska, which like Sobbing Superpower, was published by W.W. Norton.

The Found in Translation Award was established several years ago by the Polish cultural institutes in London and New York, the Kraków-based Polish Book Institute and W.A.B. Publishers of Warsaw.

Its past recipients include Bill Johnston for Różewicz’s New Poems, Danuta Borchardt for Pornography by Witold Gombrowicz, Antonia Lloyd-Jones for Paweł Huelle’s The Last Supper and Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak for Wislawa Szymborska’s Here. (mk/nh)