Squatters’ Gift by Robert Rybicki and translated by Mark Tardi

This is poetry from Poland.

Squatters’ Gift by Robert Rybicki translated by Mark Tardi is published by Dalkey Archive Press. This is a Book originally written in Polish. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78162897373E12.

Squatters’ Gift, by Robert Rybicki, is a Polish poetry collection from Poland, translated by Mark Tardi, published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2021. It is a Polish collection that sounds urban, unruly, and resistant to polite ownership. Rybicki’s title suggests a poetics of occupation and offering, where what is marginal may also be what keeps the language alive. I would read it first for the pressure of the translated line rather than as a puzzle waiting for its correct answer. The best version of a description for a book like this should give the reader a door, not a lecture: a little context, then permission to meet the poem through image, cadence, and affect. For this library, the book matters as more than a representative entry from Poland. It shows how poetry in translation can carry local weather, private intensity, and literary history into English without becoming merely informational.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.