All 1 entries tagged Bronislawa Wajs

New Romany Poem in London Review of Books

Writing about web page http://www.lrb.co.uk/

A page-long excerpt from one of my new long Romany poems 'The Library Beneath the Harp' appears in the current London Review of Books.The poem as a whole appeared in a recent issue of The Long Poem Magazine. Thankfully, both sets of editors were kind enough to allow this miracle of cooperative publication.

As blogged earlier in the year, the subject of the poem is the poet Bronisława Wajs (1908-1987) who was known by her Romani name Papusza which means ‘doll’.

She grew up on the road in Poland within her kumpania or band of families. She was literate and learned to read and write by trading food for lessons.

Her reading and writing was frowned upon and whenever she was found reading she was beaten and the book destroyed. She was married at fifteen to a much older and revered harpist Dionízy Wajs.

Unhappy in marriage she took to singing as an outlet for her frustrations with her husband often accompanying her on harp. She then began to compose her own poems and songs.

When the Second World War broke out, and Roma were being murdered in Poland both by the German Nazis and the Ukrainian fascists, they gave up their carts and horses but not their harps.

With heavy harps on their backs, they looked for hiding places in the woods. 35,000 Roma out of 50,000 were murdered during the war in Poland. The Wajs clan hid in the forest in Volyň, hungry, cold and terrified.

A horrible experience inspired Papusza to write her longest poem "Ratfale jasfa – so pal sasendyr pšegijam upre Volyň 43 a 44 berša" ("Bloody tears – what we endured from German soldiers in Volyň in '43 and '44”), parts of which are used in my poem ‘The Library Beneath the Harp’.

In 1949 Papusza was heard by the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski who recognized her talent. Ficowski published several of her poems in a magazine called Problemy along with an anti-nomadic interview with Polish poet Julian Tuwim.

Ficowski became an adviser on “The Gypsy Question”, and used Papusza's poems to make his case against nomadism. This led to the forced settlement of the Roma all over Poland in 1950 known variously as ‘Action C’ or “The Great Halt”.

The Roma community began to regard Papusza as a traitor, threatening her and calling her names. Papusza maintained that Ficowski had exploited her work and had taken it out of context.

Her appeals were ignored and the Baro Shero (Big head, an elder in the Roma community) declared her “unclean”. She was banished from the Roma world, and even Ficowski broke contact with her.

Afterward, she spent eight months in a mental asylum and then the next thirty-four years of her life alone and isolated.

Her tribe laid a curse on Papusza’s poems and upon anybody using or performing her work. My sequence of songs called ‘The Library beneath the Harp’ partly borrows and reshapes some of Papusza’s introductory autobiography from the Songs of Papusza as well as three of her poems. 

It's my heartfelt wish that the curse can be lifted. Let's hope it can. Part of my publishing in the London Review of Books, Long Poem Magazine and this blog is part of a campaign - alongside the Romany Theatre Company and others - to lift this curse.  

David Morley : 07 May 2010 12:28 |  Tags: Bronislawa Wajs Papusza Poetry Romany The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem