inside me a tree grows the branches cling to my veins tightly the roots drink my blood dry my lips turn brown inside me hunger
Halina Poswiatowska(1935-1967) published three collections of poems between 1956 and 1963, and two more collections were published posthumously. She studied at Smith College and Jagiellonian University in Cracow where she graduated with an MA in History of Philosophy. Her health was delicate and she was operated on twice for a serious heart disease; she died in 1967 at the age of 32. For her literary work, PoÊwiatowska posthumously received the PierÊcieƒ award at the Gdaƒsk Autumn Literary Festival in 1967. She is well known and widely read in Poland. In 1997 four volumes of her collected work appeared in Cracow. Anna Gàsienica-Byrcynis a graduate student at the University of Illinois and was awarded a PhD in 2000 for her thesis on ‘Aspects of Myth in the Poetry of Halina PoÊwitowska’.
