Impspired Title

SHADES OF EARTH

by ANNA MARIA MICKIEWICZ

Her poetry is rich in paradoxes: pleasure and pain, the happiness derived from waiting and the bitter taste of contemporary changes. It is a magnificent study written by a poetess – emigrant, living outside of her country but having a close look at new surroundings. Ted Smith-Orr (London) Anna Maria Mickiewicz has a special penchant for capturing watery phenomena: fogs, mists, puddles, “droplets of water”, so typical of English landscape and cityscape, but in the end, they are always seen through the filter of culture; nature and culture coalesce. Tomasz Niedokos (Poland) Anna Maria Mickiewicz is a poet, writer, editor, translator, and publisher. Founder of the publishing house Literary Waves. Anna moved from Poland to California, and then to London. She is a member of the English Pen and Polish PEN Club. Her poetic works have appeared in the United States, UK, Australia, Canada, Poland, Mexico, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Salvador, India, Chile, Peru. Honored with the Gloria Artis medal for Merit to Culture by the Polish Ministry of Culture, the Cross of Freedom and Solidarity and The Joseph Conrad Literary Prize (USA). In the 1980s, she co-edited the independent magazine Wywrotowiec (The Subversive) issued by the Inter-University Committee of Defence of Political Prisoners, in Poland. She served as the chair of the California State Poetry Society Literary Award Jury and the Jury of the International Literary Award of K. M. Anthru in India, the Jury of the Joseph Conrad Award (USA) and the Chapter of the Garden of Poetry Medal (London). She belongs to several London poetry groups, including: Enfield Poets, The Highgate Society's Poetry Group, Exiled Writers Ink. She cooperates with the American publishing house Dreamme Little City (Orlando) With the British translator Noel Clark, she participated in the creation of the Eagle and Lion exhibition, which was presented during Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Poland in March 1996. For many years she worked as a foreign correspondent for Polish press, describing cultural and literary events in Great Britain.