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Lula Bajek
“Lula’s work is tender and predatory. This predacity is an ability to open a wound by means of a picture. This wound is a gate to sensitive seeing.”
Bronka Nowicka
Girl
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Box
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Agnes
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Global Voices Interviews *Poland* Bronka Nowicka and Katarzyna Szuster in conversation with LIT’s JP Apruzzese
The Polish version of this interview appeared in Biuro Literackie on 23 March 2020
Every so often a writer comes along who shows us what literature can and perhaps is meant to do — offering not so much a different perspective as a different way of seeing. A writer whose work inhabits a space undetermined by convention, trends, topics of current interest, unafraid to put aside the noise of daily life and explore the unnoticed – unseen because ignored – life that is nevertheless fully within our grasp.
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“Regnum” A short story by Bronka Nowicka (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Artwork by Lula Bajek
Regnum
Mad Mary, Ursula, insane Nina, haunted Agnes, guide me. Let me stick my hands in the pockets of your housecoats, where the keys are nestled in the bundles of your handkerchiefs. Let me steal them and set the door to the kingdom ajar.
At night Nina kneads bread and weeps into it. In the kitchen, the milk gives off light until she pours it into dun flour and then it goes out. The woman kneads the dough in the dark. The table squeaks,
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Four Poems by Bronka Nowicka from “To Feed the Stone” (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Drawings by Lula Bajek
Box
Mother doesn’t know that heaven exists. She’s getting a double chin from looking down. Her head, as heavy as an iron, presses that fold down.
Father keeps getting in mother’s way. He’s short. To reach grown-up things, he needs to stand on his tippy-toes or get a chair. He just moved it by pressing his belly against the seat. Now he points to the cushions. He needs them stacked to reach the table. He clambers up, props his elbows on the counter covered with an oilcloth, next to a spoon,
