Arc New Voices from Europe and Beyond: 5

The six poets chosen here belong to a generation whose work stands in stark contrast to the highly individualist writing unleashed by the removal of censorship after the fall of communism, writing with an aesthetic of stylistic brutality personified by the anarchic artist-outsider, writing which rejected what had gone before.

They all take a longer view of their cultural past, re-examining and experimenting with traditional poetic forms, themes and cultural references in a refined, witty dialogue with the reader.

The editor, Jacek Dehnel was born in 1980 in Gdansk and is a poet, writer, translator and painter. Dehnel studied at Warsaw University in the MISH College (Interfacultative Individual Humanistic Studies) and graduated from the Polish Language and Literature department.

Translated by: Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Mira Rosenthal