(born in 1969 in Łódź) – poet, prose writer, publisher. He studied philosophy and Polish philology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He was the editor in chief of a nationwide literary biweekly "Nowy Nurt" and the editor of an art magazine "Już Jest Jutro". Currently, he works as an editor in WBPiCAK publishing house, where he runs the Greater Poland Library of Poetry and the Library of Modern Poetry.

Grzebalski is the author of several volumes of poetry. His poems were also published in numerous magazines and poetry anthologies. He won many prestigious awards, including the Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna Literary Award (for a collection of poems Negatyw [Negative], 1994), the Polish Association of Book Publishers Award (for the collection Ulica Gnostycka [Gnostycka Street], 1997), the Erich Burda Award (2001), the Foundation Culture Award (2014), Wrocław’s ‘Silesius’ Poetic Award in 2014 (for the volume W innych okolicznościach (In Other Circumstances), for which the author was also nominated for the Wisława Szymborska Award in 2014). In 2006, he published his prose debut Człowiek,  który biegnie przez las (The Man Who Runs Through the Forest). His poems have been translated in many foreign languages, including English, Bulgarian, Czech, Spanish, German, Serbian, Slovenian, and Swedish.

Grzebalski’s personal, sometimes intimate poetry starts with a detail and aims to seek a universal principle of the universe. Grzebalski has the ability of combining trivial, repetitive events with more profound philosophical reflection. The poet avoids being groundless, he looks for a simple and communicative form.

A recurring theme of Grzebalski’s poems is juvenescence, evanescence, and dying – of people, objects, and places. The poet abundantly draws upon his memories, and his consecutive volumes constitute some sort of an account with the past, brimming with the sense of defeat and disappointment. Grzebalski reaches not only for the memories of his youth, but also his childhood spent in Łódź, striving to give a more full, fundamental sense of past events, feelings, and choices.

Grzebalski often describes people from the margins of society, whose universal human emotions, behaviours, and experiences can be seen more distinctly, like under the magnifying glass. The narrator of those poems is also, in a way, a man from the margins of society – in the next pieces of writing, loneliness, the atmosphere of alienation, the feeling of incompatibility are repeated. Grzebalski is an observer, diagnostician (of the surroundings and himself), sometimes cruel, even cynical, yet, at the same time, capable of arousing a deep reservoir of unexpected lyricism in the trivial reality and his reader.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Negatyw, Ostrołęka: Biblioteka „Pracowni”, 1994., renewal: Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2004.
• Ulica Gnostycka, Poznań: Obserwator, Biblioteka “Czasu Kultury”, 1997.
• Widoki, Legnica: seria literacka “Barbarzyńcy i nie”, 1998.
• Drugie dotknięcie, Legnica: Biuro Literackie “Port Legnica”, 2001.
• Graffiti, edycja dwujęzyczna, Wiedeń: Editions Korrespondenzen, 2001.
• Słynne i świetne, Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2004.
• Człowiek biegnący przez las (collection of short stories), Warszawa: W.A.B., 2005.
• Pocałunek na wstecznym, Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2007.
• Niepiosenki, Wrocław: BiuroLiterackie, 2009.
• Kronika zakłóceń. Collected Poems 1994-2010, Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2011.
• W innych okolicznościach, Kraków: Wydawnictwo EMG, 2013.
• Dziennik pokładowy. Wiersze wybrane, Poznań: WBPiCAK, 2016.

TRANSLATIONS

Bulgarian:

• Miłość nie jest tym słowem. Antologia poetek i poetów polskich debiutujących po roku 1989, Sofia: Janet 45, 2014.

Czech:

• Bílépropasti. Antologiesoučasnépolsképoezie, Brno: Nakladatelství „Host”, 1997.

English:

• Carnivorous Boy, carnivorous Bird. Antologia współczesnej poezji polskiej, Chicago: Zephyr Press, 2002.
• A City of Memory. A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Polish Poetry, Bloomington: Slavica Publishers, 2014.

German:

• PolnischePoesienach der Wende – Generation ’80. Antologie, Hamburg: Wydział Slawistyki Uniwersytetu Hamburskiego, Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2008.

Serbian:

• Stanjepripravnosti. Pregledsavremenepoljskepoezije (sautorirođeni 1960. godineikasnije), Belgrad 2006.

Slovenian:

• Asklop. Polska nazaj. Antologija novejše poljske poezije, Ljubljana: Lud Šerpa 2005.

Spanish:

• Poesía a contragolpe. Antología de poesíapolacacontemporánea (autoresnacidos entre 1960 y 1980), wybór i tłum. Gerardo Beltrán, Abel A. Murcia, Xavier Farré, Zaragoza: PrensasUniversitarias de Zaragoza, 2012.

Swedish:

• 17 polskapoeter, Stockholm: FiB:SLyrikklubb 2003.