'To Save You in a Poem, Turtle': The New Mourning in the Eco-Poetry of Anna Adamowicz

• In Event: Ecocritical Imaginations in Contemporary Russian and Polish Poetry

Abstract

Despite her young age, Anna Adamowicz (b. 1993) has already established herself as one of the most intriguing contemporary Polish poets. She was awarded the Wisława Szymborska Prize for the best work of poetry for her collection Animalia (2019), a scathing critique of the ways in which the human species mindlessly destroys its own planet, basking its own relentless consumerism and harming non-human animals as a result. This paper explores the concept of environmental grief, or “solastalgia”, as expressed in Animalia. Solastalgia, a term coined by environmental scholar Glenn Albrecht, refers to the emotional distress caused by environmental change and destruction, and specifically by the loss of a familiar home environment. The paper focuses on how Adamowicz’s poems address this grief, especially the anguish felt over environmental degradation and the destruction of non-human life that results from human actions. Traditional literary genres of grieving, such as elegies, psalms, and prayers, are deemed inadequate in the face of the unprecedented scale of ecological devastation. Instead, the poet engages in “new mourning”, a process that accounts for both current environmental losses and those anticipated in the future, therefore attesting to the temporal plasticity of grief.

Author

• Klaudia Cierluk, Northwestern U