AustLit

Krystyna Wanda Jackiewicz (1920–1977) and Liliana Rydzyńska (1938–2005) were two Polish-born women poets who emigrated to Australia in the postwar period, Jackiewicz as a ‘Displaced Person’ arriving from India in 1947, Rydzyńska choosing to move here from France in 1969. Their poems could not be more different. Rydzyńska's apparently autobiographical poetry represents Australians as severely emotionally repressed, and her move to Australia as ‘one great mistake’ (‘Martwa natura z Australią’ [Still Life with Australia]). This perspective contrasts markedly with Jackiewicz's embrace of Australia in poems like ‘Druga Miłosć’ (A Second Love), about her home city of Lwów (L'viv) and her new home of Tasmania, where the speaker's affection for her adopted country is as palpable as her attachment to her lost homeland. Through a discussion of some poems by each author, in translation, I compare their perspectives as women writers belonging to different generations of migration from Poland, and explore the extent to which one can fruitfully read their work through the concept of gender. [Author's abstract]