Meet the Author – Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało / promotional even

We would like to invite you to an evening with Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało. The special occasion for the meeting is the premiere of her poem sheet entitled Poems for Your Daughter, published as part of the package accompanying the 24. Children’s Art Biennale.

The author will tell us about her creative inspirations and explorations. Her latest publication takes readers into the world of small mammals, insects, birds, and fish – seen from a close-up perspective, in all its materiality.

And yet, animals have been so far customarily associated with pretty conventionalised children’s literature. In previous eras, their representations had a specific function. Today, older depictions seem laden with didacticism; we often perceive them as infantile.

The time has come for animals to reclaim their subjectivity. We will discuss what the contemporary perspective on writing (and reading) poems about nature is all about. We will reflect on the potential that lies in the abandonment of anthropocentric representations and the increased interest in animal biographies. As a result, we get protagonists who do not fit into the familiar dichotomies – the natural and the artificial, the childlike and the adult. They are not concerned with the problem of class – neither school, economic, nor any other divisions. But can didactic baggage still weigh over their representations? What does abandoning stereotypical readings and expectations give us? And what role can camp play in the concern for interspecies equality?

We will also talk about the audiences of art created for the child, which in practice often turns out to be art that connects generations, looking at what adult readers can find (and often do find!) in literature for children and youth.

There will be time and space to reflect on the visual layer of the publication created by Richie Acapulco and perfectly corresponding with the poetry of Agnieszki Wolny-Hamkało.

The meeting and Q&A session will be moderated by Lucyna Marzec, a literary scholar.