The aim of the article is to analyse the way in which Seweryn Korzeliński and Bolesław Dolański describe the geographical location of Australia (the distance that separates it from Europe). In many reports from Australia and literary texts describing the continent, written either before or after Korzeliński’s and Dolański’s memoirs, the distance that separates Australia from Europe is considered the main characteristic feature that determines the way in which other Australian phenomena are regarded. The article discusses the interesting way in which the two authors present Australian geographical location and the purpose this literary interpretation serves in their memoirs.

The article discusses the concept of ‘borderland’ in selected works by Sygurd Wiśniowski: a 19^th century Polish traveller who encountered the territorial and cultural expansion of the white settlers in Australia and North America. The author of the article aims to present both the specificity and the complexity of ‘borderland phenomenon’ as described by Wiśniowski. The author concentrates also on absent or omitted elements in Wiśniowski’s discourse (which can be observed in his attitude towards the native inhabitants and women) and reveals Wiśniowski’s utopian ideas (such as equality of opportunity).

Along the lines of the so­called multicultural discourse and socio­political milieu in Australia, the article is concerned with Adam Fiala’s literary and non­literary imageries of Australia and also deals with the relation of Fiala’s poetic and prose themes to various realities of Australia. Given that Australia as a host country determines/influences writers’ life and work, the article seeks to discover possible spaces in which the Polish writer­migrant/his work and his characters/narrators/voices are positioned (and/or positioning themselves) to function and/or to domesticate Australia. Both the Polish writer­migrant’s life in Australia and his literary scenarios are explained with some thought of migrancy and migrant/border narrative’ notions.

This is a presentation of the prose poetry of Ania Walwicz, one of Australia’s best­known experimental writers and performers but unknown in Poland. Her two pieces: Australia and Poland are given special attention to show some of the fundamental features of her poems, i.e. loss of identity and transgressive forms of her language. A short recollection of the author’s encounter with the poet in 2012 is included as well.

Migration always involves loss, which inspires potential writers and is itself often the focus of migrants’ narratives. Seen through this monodimensional attachment to things left behind and hence not particularly valued, written and unwritten stories of migrants’ experiences are themselves prone to disappear, together with the memory of their authors. This paper examines the work of a biographer and poet, Bogumiła Żongołłowicz, commited to recovering and preserving achievements of Polish post­war migrants in Australia, reclaiming forgotten or unappreciated literary works for future readers, and celebrating life and memory of those who would otherwise perish as well.

Jerzy Domaradzki started to work in Australia after his film Wielki bieg [The Great Race] had been presented at a film festival in Sydney. During those first years he had been mainly teaching at a film school, but after some time he began to make feature films and documentaries. The text examines the films he made in Australia, analyzing the way he selected characters and the problems he had in developing stories and images of people of different nations, cultures and times.

The Polish reaction to Peter Weir’s film The Way Back (2010) was centred on a discussion about the credibility of its literary prototype, Sławomir Rawicz’s book The long walk (1955). The author of the article does not discuss this controversy; she prefers to concentrate on the adaptation that was chosen by the director, who combines different interpretations of the phenomenon of freedom in his movie. Weir’s approach can be regarded as transnational and such a perspective is suggested as a context for the interpretation of The Way Back.

Leaving one’s homeland comes as a shock for an emigrant and his family. It is even more difficult when they decide to settle down in a country as far away from Poland as Australia is. Its exotic character, so different from European lifestyle conventions, can cause difficulties in adapting to the new culture and make the whole process last longer. Language and culture – the two elements closely connected with emigration are discussed in the article. On the one hand there is a need to preserve one’s own values, on the other, however at the same time, one must adapt to new values to avoid isolation.

The Polish language keeps losing its position in comparison with other community languages. This is a result of new waves of immigrants arriving from China, Vietnam and Arabic countries. The article presents the current situation of Polish language in Australia referring first to the data gathered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, then discussing factors that are crucial for language maintenance/shifting using the already existing models. The author divides the factors into ‘permanent’ and ‘dynamic,’ and then, in the second group he distinguishes between the factors that can or cannot be profiled. Such an approach reveals the areas where initiatives aimed at Polish language maintenance in Australia are most needed and can be the most effective.

Organised education in Polish has existed in Australia since the middle of the last century. In terms of primary and secondary education, these extracurricular language classes are held mostly on Saturday mornings, rather than weekday afternoons. Some schools come under local Polish organisations such as Związek Polski (Polish Association), others are part of the Polska Macierz Szkolna (Polish Educational Society). There are also many independent schools which are governed by Parent Associations. These schools continue to gain in popularity – and have particularly done so in recent years. At tertiary level, the Polish language has also been offered at the Department of International Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney since the 1980s.

The article presents Polish research on the category of ‘space’, which influenced the shaping of the concept of geopoetics in Polish literary studies. Geopoetics is understood, according to Elżbieta Rybicka’s guidelines, as ‘concept­in­action’. The author of the article begins with theoretical considerations, then presents contemporary foreign theories and finally analyses theoretical works of Michał Głowiński, Henryk Markiewicz, and Janusz Sławiński. He also discusses the concept of ‘new regional studies’ in the context of the spatial turn. Using Stefania Skwarczyńska’s works, the author of the article claims ‘new regional studies’ to be one of the crucial elements of geopoetics.

The author of the article has been inspired by Wallerstein’s theory of ‘systems­worlds’, especially by the opposition between cultural centre (innovative, because it is able to produce popular scientific theories) and periphery (only testing such theories). At the starting point she is also willing to trust the notion of Richard Florida („What is interesting happens aside”). In the article she asks if Silesian literary ‘micrology’ may become a popular strategy of interpretation. The author claims that trends in science are closely connected with innovation and she describes literary ‘micrology’ in terms of Ryszard Nycz’s definition of innovation. The author suggests that Silesian literary ‘micrology’ (focused on what is small, apparently insignificant, disappearing) results from certain trends. Is it possible, however, that ‘micrology’ that is trying to avoid repetition (a crucial element of innovation) can become trendy itself?

The diversity of language etiquette forms has already been noted by linguists (the author presents the evolution of the way it has been defined in their works). However, this issue does not appear very often in the works of scholars. The article aims at presenting several different types of politeness that have been defined on the basis of various different criteria. For example the substance of expression, which involves distinguishing between two types of politeness: one expressed in language and the other expressed by non­linguistic means. Another criterion refers to social commonness and according to this criterion we can distinguish between elementary politeness, courtesy and formal etiquette. Diversity of language etiquette can be regarded as resulting form the pragmatic features of a speaker. Culture­based differentiation enables us to talk about ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ politeness. According to the author, teaching different types of language etiquette is an important part of teaching Polish as a foreign language.

In the article the subject of attention is the communication strategies of pupils in schools with Polish as the language of instruction in the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia. The pupils know more than one language code – at a minimum, the local dialect, Polish and Czech, and they alternating between these codes in linguistic communication daily. The article presents excerpts from interviews with these pupils conducted by the authors (and researchers), in which the causes, methods and consequences of such specific communication strategies are revealed. The main triggers of code changes were found to be mainly changes of conversation topics and changes in the language of communication partners. The article also touches upon other issues: the conceptualization of the world through traditional dialect, the utility of dialects in the contemporary world of technological, scientific and cultural progress and the emergence of mixed supranational spoken languages, etc.

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The article presents the summary of the 2015 season of Polish filmmaking. All movies mentioned in the article are chosen and described according to that which would be interesting for a foreigner or a person who studies Polish as a foreign language. The following films are described here: Król życia, Chemia, Obce niebo, Demon, Klub włóczykijów, Panie Dulskie, Disco polo, Listy do M. 2, Moje córki krowy, Mur.

The article presents the most important and the most interesting prose and poetry publications that appeared in 2015. Last year was marked by a dominance of well­known authors (such as Janusz Anderman, Sylwia Chutnik, Michał Witkowski, Łukasz Orbitowski, Andrzej Sosnowski, Krzysztof Varga, Zenon Fajfer, Marta Podgórnik, Tadeusz Pióro, Marcin Świetlicki) and proved that books that consider identity problems can gain positive readers’ response.

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