Ewa Sonnenberg (born 1967) is a Polish poet, pianist, essayist and academic who has won several awards for her work. A lesbian, she is best known for her volume entitled Hazard.[1]
Ewa Sonnenberg | |
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| Born | Ewa Sonnenberg 30 March 1967 Ząbkowice Śląskie, Poland |
| Occupation |
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| Language | Polish |
| Education | Wrocław Academy of Music; Jagiellonian University |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Notable works | Hazard (a collection of poems) |
| Notable awards |
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Early life and career
editSonnenberg was born on 30 March 1967 in Ząbkowice Śląskie in south-western Poland. For a time, she lived with her grandparents near Srebrna Góra at the foothills of the Owl Mountains, which she explored as a child. She went to school in Lubin and then graduated from the Wrocław Academy of Music, having studied the piano with Grzegorz Kurzyński. In 1990, she was in a car accident in which her hands were badly damaged, raising doubts about her ability to pursue a career as a pianist at a high level. Having written prize-winning poetry at high school she returned to writing while studying to be one of the first master's graduates in literary and artistic studies at the Institute of Polish Philology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, later becoming a lecturer at the same institute. Sonnenberg made her home in Wroclaw and organized cultural evenings in which she would play the piano and recite her poetry, later inviting other performers to join her. She belongs to the Perfokarta group of cybernetic and experimental poets. Sonnenberg is openly lesbian: her poems are always addressed to women and have been described as "masculine".[1][2][3][4]
Publications
editHer works include the following volumes of poetry: Hazard (1995), The Land of a Thousand Notebooks (1997), Planeta (1997), Smycz (2000), Płonący tram (2001), A lesson in insight (2005), Written on sand (2007), Collected poems (2014), Hologramy (2015), and Poems for one man (2017); the prose poem Obca (2015) and the book of essays, My paper loves (2016). She has also published Page of the Queen. A Fairy Tale for Lovers (2006) and Encyclopedia of the madman (2006). Her poems have been translated from Polish into English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Turkish, Russian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Italian and Ukrainian.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
Awards and recognition
editFor her volume Hazard, Sonnenberg received the Georg Trakl Award in 1995, granted by a jury chaired by Maciej Słomczyński. She was Best Poet at the 9th International Literary Ilinden Festival in North Macedonia in 2008 and received the Four Columns Literary Award for lifetime achievement (2012). In 2016 she was a finalist of the Orpheus Poetry Award for the volume Hologramy and in 2018 she was nominated for this award for the volume Wiersze dla jeden Człowiek (Poems for one man). She has been a scholarship recipient from the Fund for Assistance to Independent Polish Literature and Science (Paris - 1998) and has twice received a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2001, 2008).[1][3][4]
In 2014, 50 of the benches in Planty Park in Kraków had a name plate added to them of an author who either came from or was connected with Kraków. A further 50 were added a year later. Next to the name was a QR code, which enabled people to access brief information about the author and read an excerpt from their work. This was one of the activities associated with the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature celebrations of that year. Sonnenberg was one of those recognised in this way.[2][8][9]
Her original manuscripts are held by the National Library of Poland in Warsaw. Her poems have been included in a wide variety of anthologies published throughout Europe and in the US and India.[1][3][4]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e Kaczorowski, Paweł. "Rozmowa z Ewą Sonnenberg". Centrum Badań nad Dziedzictwem Kulturowym Dolnego Śląska. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ a b c "Eva Sonnenberg". Krakow UNESCO City of Literature. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ a b c d "Ewa Sonnenberg". Wydawnictwo Warstwy. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ a b c d "Ewa Sonnenberg – Siedem wierszy". Helikopter. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ "Ewa Sonnenberg". Lubimyczytac. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ "Ewa Sonnenberg". Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ "Ewa Sonnenberg książki". Polska Księgarnia Online. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
- ^ "List". Krakow UNESCO City of Literature. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
- ^ "City Codes and Next 50 Literary Benches". KRAKOW UNESCO City of Literature. Retrieved 15 August 2024.