Mr Optico

Andrzej Niewiadomski

Poetry "focused on presenting the world, not on the rapid expression of the poems' protagonist" - Adam Poprawa aptly sums up Adam Niewiadomski's new volume. "Mr. Optico. Poems of three seasons" is another poetic premiere this year from the Tymoteusz Karpowicz Foundation. Long, massive, clean structures - organized, dense images - movement along a precisely marked path - the communicative voice of an off-screen narrator... - The author invites the reader on a longer journey, giving no illusions of a quick and easy read. However, this does not mean battling through hermetic barriers.

Andrzej Niewiadomski's poetry somewhat resembles a road movie, with which the reader begins to identify in various ways. For this to work, the reader and author must first get to know each other. The reader first in the passenger seat. It is not impossible, however, that these customary roles will change, and it will be the reader who takes the wheel somewhere in the middle of the book. Jacek Gutorow notes that it is "a book for repeated reading. A book that opens itself to the reader slowly, but surely and at the pace of strung together and piling up, suggestively growing images, which will often evoke in us a sense of déjà-vu (as Niewiadomski adds in the margin of the volume, "any resemblance to real volumes, titles, poems, and persons is coincidental, though intentional" -), but will also stir the deep waters of imagination and sensitivity. An interesting, intriguing proposal of poetry with a longer breath and restrained, measured energy of words."

The book features sophisticated graphic design by Karolina Wiśniewska. Andrzej Niewiadomski (born 1965), poet, literary critic, editor of the quarterly "Kresy." Author of eight books of poetry. He has published in the most important literary journals and has been translated into many languages. In 2013, as the first author nominated for the Gdynia Literary Award, he was a finalist in two categories: poetry and essay. He works at the Department of Contemporary Literature at UMCS in Lublin. He lives in Lublin.