JOANNA KUROWSKA

Joanna’s poems are like soulful scrolls of the ordinary world depicted with brilliant intensity.

—Ivaana Muse

Inclusions, Cervena Barva Press 2014

Sample poems:

Indian Summer

Silence

Snow

Click   to request an author-signed copy.
This book is available also at Cervena Barva Press, Small Press Distribution, and on Amazon.

PRAISE FOR INCLUSIONS:

“These mostly short, lapidary lyrics present to the reader not only a fallen world of detritus, missed emotional connections, thoughtless consumption, empty gratification, but also a world of fragile and fleeting beauty, raptures that last “but a fraction of a second,” and art-making that redeems us. A town’s soul leaks away as globalization grinds everyone and everything to sameness; a bishop’s suit in a window is “a skin missing a body”; and a price is put on everything: “The trees have turned into business letters.” This is simply the “now,” as Kurowska sees it. But these are spiritual poems, though the god evoked—invoked—is not the property of any single group or mission. . . . And always, the human possibilities, and the beauty of the world, are what we transcend to.”

— James Cummins
Author of Still Some Cake

___________

“Inclusions is a book of surprising, reflective encounters with things as small as ants and as big as God. The ants, however, are big enough to make us think about the meaning of life and death. God, on the other hand, is small and light enough to fit into a snowflake. The poems listen to silence, loved ones now gone, cupboards and birds. Joanna Kurowska’s slender verses pray by playing and masterfully lead the reader to the realization that “knowing is letting go.”

— Katia Mitova
Author of Dream Diary

___________

Do not be fooled by the apparent lightness or slightness of her small, neat poems, simultaneously orderly and fluid: there are big issues at stake here as she constantly reaches out to define the intangible image and essence of a god or greater force. She may never find an absolute answer, but she is always able to pull out of the mix something at which to marvel, and to sum it up with a single clever phrase or image with which to pin it down. It’s this power to be positive that makes this collection ultimately uplifting, one to keep and come back to for a realistic fix of reasons to be cheerful, without shirking from the harsher side of life…

…Her poems are at once poignant and capricious – a heady, subtle and well-controlled mix.

—Debbie Young
Literary critic

Copyright ©Joanna Kurowska.  Any content from this website may not be reproduced without permission.