Maria Jastrzębska


Maria Jastrzębska is a Polish-British poet, feminist, editor, translator and playwright. She has published three full-length volumes of poetry and two pamphlets, and co-founded Queer Writing South and South Pole. She regularly contributes to a range of journals and anthologies, including the Los Angeles Review, Poetry Review, Shearsman and Poetry London.

Early life and education

Maria Jastrzębska was born in Warsaw and moved to the United Kingdom as a young child. She went to Ealing Grammar School for Girls, and the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, both in London. She later studied Developmental Psychology at the University of Sussex.
She has taught communication in further education, which included Youth Training Schemes, and also creative writing in adult education.

Literary career

Jastrzębska has been writing since she was very young; her first book, created before she could write, was entitled My Book and was filled with squiggles.
As a young adult, she began contributing to a range of feminist journals, including Spare Rib, Writing Women and Spinster.

Personal life

She lives with her partner in Brighton.

Works and themes

Jastrzębska's third full length collection is At The Library of Memories. She is the co-founder of Queer Writing South and South Pole and co-edited Queer in Brighton with Anthony Luvera. Her poetry features in the British Library project Poetry Between Two Worlds and her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally to sell-out audiences.
Jastrzębska's work focuses on borders and boundaries: between countries, cultures and languages, between social and sexual identities, health and illness. Her experience of arriving in the UK from Poland as a child, with having to adapt to a different language, culture and society, has informed all her written work. Poet and fellow ‘exile’ George Szirtes characterises says her "poems open out like adventures in a dual land that is both here and elsewhere".

Publications

Full-length collections
Postcards from Poland and Other Correspondences
Cedry z Walpole Park
Cutite vechi
Translations
Elsewhere, Iztok Osojnik, 2011
The Great Plan B, Justyna Bargielska 2017, Smokestack Press
Edited works
Whoosh! A Queer Writing South Anthology
Different and Beautiful. An Anthology of Writing by LGBT young people from Allsorts Youth Project
Queer in Brighton