An Evening with Tadeusz Dabrowski—Immersive Experience of Poetry Read In Darkness
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: The Kosciuszko Foundation, Washington, DC Center, 2025 O St.
The Kosciuszko Foundation Washington DC invites you to a unique literary evening with Tadeusz Dąbrowski — one of the most acclaimed voices in contemporary Polish poetry. This event celebrates the U.S. release of his poetry collection, "The Scent of Man," translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and set to be published by Arrowsmith Press in October 2025.
Tadeusz Dąbrowski is renowned for his linguistic precision, philosophical depth, and emotional resonance—qualities that have earned him a lasting place in the landscape of contemporary Polish literature. He will be introduced to the Kosciuszko Foundation audience by Joshua Weiner, award-winning American poet, Professor of English at the University of Maryland, and a friend of the author.
Program Highlights:
• Introduction by Joshua Weiner
• Selected fragments from the film “Why Poetry Is Essential to Our Life” by Andrzej Dudziński, presenting the work and creative philosophy of Tadeusz Dąbrowski.
• Poetry reading by Tadeusz Dąbrowski — presented in darkness to underscore the power of the spoken word
• Interactive Q&A session with the poet
• Book signing (limited copies of “The Scent of Man” available for purchase)
• Wine & cheese reception
This is a rare opportunity to engage with one of Europe’s most distinctive poetic voices in an intimate and thought-provoking setting.
Admission: Free – RSVP required at KFDC@thekf.org
Note: Space is limited
Photos of Tadeusz Dąbrowski by Isolde Ohlbaum
About Tadeusz Dąbrowski:
Born in 1979, Tadeusz Dąbrowski is an acclaimed Polish poet, essayist, and editor whose poetry has been translated into over 20 languages. Often compared to Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, and Wisława Szymborska, his work is celebrated for its philosophical insight, minimalist language, and its ability to convey deep truths through everyday experience.
His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Boston Review, AGNI, and Poetry Review. English-language collections include “Black Square” and “POSTS” (Zephyr Press), with his latest collection, “The Scent of Man,” forthcoming in October 2025.
Dąbrowski has received numerous honors, including the Kościelski Prize, the Hubert Burda Prize, and fellowships from the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Landis & Gyr Stiftung, and Yaddo. He is editor-in-chief of the literary magazine “Topos” and curator of the European Poet of Freedom Festival in Gdańsk, where he lives with his partner and two young children.
The Scent of Man
by Tadeusz Dąbrowski
tr. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Tadeusz Dąbrowski’s poetry is as beguiling, reflective and precise as a thousand fragments of a shattered mirror. The poet is properly suspicious of the ambiguities concealed in all language: “very dangerous to know/too many words.//Each of them has its/fl ip side, which/also has its flip side/and so on ad infinitum.” Whether gazing at art or looking at laundry, meditating on our cravings for bread or literature, the poems move effortlessly between the mundane and the exalted, suggesting that the messiness of human experience, its visceral realities, the carnal truths of the body, our small joys and inevitable decay, are all part of the same fragile narrative. This poetry, masterfully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, moves intimately through spaces sacred and profane, suggesting we are never fully in one world or the other but ever adrift in between.
Poets and Critics about Tadeusz Dąbrowski:
Like his poetic compatriot Szymborska, Tadeusz Dąbrowski knows that straightforward
language is an efficient and beguiling way to access the mysteries that lie beyond the
limits of prose.
Billy Collins
Tadeusz Dąbrowski is in poetry what the French call “le grand reporter.” He has the
temperament of a realist but his realism is of a poetic nature, it leads to a revelation, not to
accusation. His poems achieve an astonishing degree of density which is an adequate
response to the absurdity of our world. A remarkable collection of poems!
Adam Zagajewski
Tadeusz Dąbrowski’s “Posts” is a beautifully translated desolation-cum-disorientation
leavened with jokes and full of sharp laconic lyricism. It’s just that the lyricism is keenly
aware of its own lost project. And that’s what makes it such fine nerve-touching poetry.
George Szirtes
About Joshua Weiner:
Joshua Weiner is a poet, translator, and professor based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of four poetry collections, including “The World’s Room, From the Book of Giants,” and “The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish” (University of Chicago Press), as well as the satirical chapbook “Everything I Do I Do Good: Trumpoems.” He also edited “At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn.”
His many honors include the Whiting Writers Award, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. His translation of Nelly Sachs’ “Flight and Metamorphosis” (with Linda B. Parshall) was published by Farrar Straus Giroux in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry.
Weiner teaches in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and lives in D.C. with his wife, novelist Sarah Blake, and their two sons.
