Acclaimed Polish poet and essayist Tadeusz Dąbrowski will read from his new book of poems at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21, in the Archives of Colby-Sawyer's Susan Colgate Cleveland Library/Learning Center. 

The editor-in-chief of the literary bimonthly Topos is touring the United States to promote The Scent of Man, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.  

The reading — organized by Ewa Chrusciel, M. Roy London Endowed Chair and professor of creative and professional writing — is free and open to the public. 

“It will be a unique opportunity and gift for our creative & professional writing students and other majors to encounter Tadeusz Dąbrowski, one of the leading Polish poets,” said Chrusciel. “Such readings elevate their understanding and appreciation of poetry, and encourage their own voices as they interact with the authors — dining with them, engaging in Q&A sessions and handling the introduction at the reading.” 

Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminsky, named by the BBC as one of 12 artists who changed the world, said Dąbrowski’s work teaches him how to be bewildered and astonished and how to live alone, even when he is not alone. “It is a lucky thing to have a real poet live in one’s time, watching us watch him, as he watches the night train which rubs cat-like against the glow of our little town, too hurriedly,” Kaminsky wrote. 

Dąbrowski’s writing has been translated into 30 languages. He's penned nine volumes of poetry in Polish and a dozen in translation. He also has written a novel, Bezbronna kreska (2016), set in New York City, and a collection of essays on poetry, In Metaphor (2024). His work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker. 

Arrowsmith Press, which published the book, described it this way: “Whether gazing at art or looking at laundry, meditating on our cravings for bread or literature, the poems move effortlessly between the mundane and the exalted, suggesting that the messiness of human experience, its visceral realities, the carnal truths of the body, our small joys and inevitable decay, are all part of the same fragile narrative." 

Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists and nonfiction authors, as well as classics, biographies, essays, crime fiction, poetry and children’s books. 

The Scent of Man is available for preorder for $18 until Oct. 23. 

The Scent of Man 

They sat in my compartment, 

two couples of an indefinable 

age. They smelled of yesterday’s 

and tomorrow’s alcohol, cheap tobacco 

and heroic helplessness. The woman opposite 

me must have had lovely features, before 

they were plowed up by a long gang bang with ethanol 

and acetaldehyde. Each individually 

did not yet stink, only as a foursome 

did they release the odor of one bona fide 

bum. The question flashed through my mind, 

what does humankind smell like, and would its 

clean part be able, like a gigantic 

bar of toilet soap, to smother the nasty 

stench of the rest, to shut their decay 

in an airtight coffin of perfume. And where 

in the midst of all this does my own smell float. 

                        Published with permission of the author.