A poet and essayist born in Warsaw in 1943. He is the author of seven volumes of verse and a large collection of poetry titled The Ordinary, The Symbolic and The Authentic.

Matywiecki does not publish much, but each of his volumes is meticulously prepared. His work forms part of the classical tendency in contemporary Polish poetry. In terms of both form and themes, his are highly traditional lyrics. Matywiecki's subjects are typical of the reflexive-philosophical lyric: transience, melancholy, the mystery of existence, and death. He recently edited an anthology of Polish poetry, From the Beginning, which aroused wide interest. This unusual two-volume collection includes verse from the medieval period to the twentieth century. The value of the anthology resides in the fact that it stirred widespread discussion of the accomplishments and viability of Polish verse. Matywiecki's most important work so far is his large (over 500 pages) collection of essays, Border Markers, which aroused widespread comment and was honored with the prestigious PEN-Club Prize. Border Markers is the author's personal coming to terms with the Holocaust and the undeserved suffering of the Jews. The author had no direct, conscious experience of the cruelty of war or of the ghetto, yet he felt obligated as a member of a people marked for extermination to take up the inexpressible problem of suffering, and the phenomenon of evil, in an eschatological perspective.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry:

• Struna, Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1979.
• Płanetnik i śmierć, Warszawa: PIW, 1981.
• Zwyczajna, symboliczna, prawdziwa, Warszawa: OPEN, 1998.
• Ta chmura powraca, Kraków: WL, 2005.
• Powietrze i czerń, Kraków: WL, 2009.
• Zdarte okładki [zbiór wierszy], Wrocław:  Biuro Literackie, 2009
• Widownia, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2012.

Essays:

• Kamień graniczny, Warszawa: "Latona", 1994.
• Myśli do słów, Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2013.
• Świadomość, Mikołów: Instytut Mikołowski, 2014.

Anthology:

• Od początku: antologia poezji polskiej od średniowiecza do wieku XX. Ułożył Piotr Matywiecki, tomy 1-2, Gdańsk: Marabut, 1997.

Monograph:

• Twarz Tuwima, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo W.A.B., 2007.

TRANSLATIONS

Finnish:

• Alku, Nuori Voima, 5/1995.