‘Waltzing St. Kilda’: Writing in Polish in Australia

Authors

  • Mary Besemeres Australian National University
  • Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams ANU Centre for European Studies

Keywords:

Transnational literature, LOTE literature, diaspora, transcultural identity

Abstract

This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.

 

Author Biographies

  • Mary Besemeres, Australian National University
    Mary Besemeres is the author of Translating One’s Self: Language and Selfhood in
    Cross-Cultural Autobiography (Peter Lang, 2002) and refereed articles and book chapters on translingual and cross-cultural memoir. With Anna Wierzbicka, she co-edited Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures (UQP,
    2007). She was founding co-editor, with Maureen Perkins, of the Routledge journal Life
    Writing, and now serves on its editorial board. Mary is an Honorary Lecturer in the School
    of Literature, Languages & Linguistics at the Australian National University.
  • Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams, ANU Centre for European Studies
    Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams is Deputy Director and Jean Monnet Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, The Australian National University. Her research focuses on life writing and memory narratives, the issues of migration, displacement, and mediation of memory. She is the author of articles and book chapters on transcultural and migration experience, and a book on changes in literary production and reception (Deforming Shakespeare: Investigations in Textuality and Digital Media, 2009). Recently, she has worked on a series of publications on Eastern European literature and memory in Australia. She leads several research projects on memory and culture in international relations.

References

References are in body of submission

Downloads

Published

2022-06-28

Issue

Section

Articles