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- © JStadnicki, 2020 / Gloucester / UK
Photography © John Stadnicki, May 2020
creative
Somnia launch in Stroud / 5th December 8pm / Museum in the Park
SOMNIA Knives, Forks, Spoons Press / Sep. 2019
About SOMNIA:
Writer Ian Seed (author of New York Hotel, a TSL Book of the Year) wrote: ‘one of the best books of poetry I’ve read this year is Maria Stadnicka’s extraordinarily vivid collection, Somnia.’
‘Stadnicka’s poetics is one of craftmanship, wherein she carefully walks the tightrope of surreal poetic metaphor and the gritty realism of investigative journalism and broadcasting.’ (Briony Hughes, writer and critic, Stride Magazine, October 2019)
‘Somnia is consistently alluring and enigmatic in its poetic voice. What compels it’s Stadnicka’s calm creativity in conveying the horrors and/or abstractions of these – her poetic voice completely comfortable in its suggestiveness: inventive, provoking, highly visual.’ (Mike Ferguson, writer and critic, International Times, September 2019)
Somnia will be launched on 5th December 2019, 8pm. Free entry.
Publisher: Knives, Forks and Spoons Press.
Editor: Alec Newman
Cover artwork: Mark Mawer
November, 2019
Landscape with Buses
On both sides of the frontline,
orchards in bloom.
People buy and sell goods,
occupy central squares,
dogs run after barefoot children
with grain baskets – linen flags.
Buses on schedule, taxis in queue.
Business as usual.
Gunshots, grenades, mortars.
Stray barks come out of houses
with blown-up windows. Splinters
rising – morning’s canines.
Soldiers wake up to the call to prayer,
switch radio on, shave by the roadside.
Nametags rest in shoe polish tins,
heat bakes bread already sliced.
Buses carry wounded further inland.
Poem published in Sweat, Ink and Tears, 8th Jan. 2019, available here.
©Maria Stadnicka, 2019
Sketches
New text…@International Times
Exile
Witness to a repeated history
in exile I learn a new language
facing the border control
at Heathrow Airport I wear my mother’s coat
ready for a winter of politics
when I need to
I keep my mouth shut I change my name to
look just like her
white and uncomfortable
the blinding sun has been washed and
smells of violets
people are happy
in such a beautiful land
nobody minds me
amongst
wrapped-well-packed boxes
brushing the dust off velvet cutlery
the only remains
of life before baptism.
©Maria Stadnicka
Photograph: ©Nick Victor
http://internationaltimes.it/exile-2/
Exile
Witness to a repeated history
in exile I learn a new language
facing the border control
at Heathrow Airport I wear my mother’s coat
ready for a winter of politics
when I need to
I keep my mouth shut I change my name
to look just like her
white and uncomfortable
the blinding sun has been washed and
smells of violets
people are happy
in such a beautiful land
nobody minds me
amongst
wrapped-well-packed boxes
brushing the dust off velvet cutlery
the only remains
of life before baptism.
photographs: copyright@John Stadnicki, 2016
In Other Words, Freedom
The fatal morning Europe woke up and thought it had something to say,
there was nobody else left in the world able to listen.
Oh, earth, the bones had gathered to queue for bread,
by the front door at Saint Joseph seminary.
An ordinary day for ordinary death.
The bakery opened and closed.
The workers arrived on time for a last shift then went home.
The ovens had no traces of grain.
The ink stained hope filled up rusty water pipes.
The crowds’ whisper went on, up the hill, out of the city.
After that, freedom meant nothing.
It all came down to
who could hold the front running place the longest.
Peace Talk
A peace talk has taken place
today between me and these wounds; the treaty signed
on a scrap of blank paper
with a determination which lasted
for over thirty eight years.
Thirty eight long roads.
Ended quietly in a town with
almost no street lights and yet
I reluctantly said yes
for the sake of another last hour.
The Reality of Lines
I am the best like this
with nothing left
hanging
dried purple tulips
at each door handle.
With no audience
I face the blackness of each line
to learn what remains of reality.
The hope that all could be new
when everything is
already gone.
@Maria Stadnicka
Thought
to M. M.
Even without a language
I walk that way
marching towards the watery sun
with anger.
It never rains inside of an egg
so
I choose to deny
the sea born
in my rib cage
and go on
being allowed to hope.
Photo: Maria Stadnicka
Maria Stadnicka 