The author of this article attempts to interpret the poetry of Teresa Fe­renc through the lens of feminist new materialism. The concept of hydrofeminism, developed by Astrida Neimanis, provides a theoretical framework for demonstrating that water in Ferenc’s work is not only a vital element of her poetic world but also articulates the engagement of the author of Pieta (1981) with broader social concerns. The poet, whose work has so far been interpreted primarily from a biographical perspective, addresses broader social issues in her poetry. In the numerous aquatic motifs that recur throughout her work, the author discerns an interpretive potential that allows them to be read within the context of feminist thought. Interpreting this element in Ferenc’s poetry creates an opportunity for deeper reflection on the existence of both human and non-human beings. Such an interpretive perspective, grounded in specifically female experience, makes it possible to challenge dualistic models of understanding the world.

This article analyzes the character of Emilia Piątek (Wassermilka), the protagonist of Horst Bienek’s Gliwice tetralogy, with particular emphasis on the first volume, titled Pierwsza polka. Wassermilka is situated within the figure of the witch and examined against the backdrop of cultural, social, and symbolic markers that define the literary heroine as a witch. Ecofeminist thought, the concept of mon-strous femininity, and Silvia Federici’s fundamental reflections in Caliban and the Witch serve as the starting point for a reflection on the identity of the Silesian witch. The article also draws attention to the motif of water in the novel, particularly the river, which resonates with Astrid Neimanis’s concept of hydrofeminism, suggesting con-nections between human and non-human organisms based on the flow of fluids. By weaving these perspectives together, the character of Wassermilka is interpreted in a multi-layered way, situated at the intersection of issues related to gender, locality, and mythological imagination.

The article examines mourning within the framework of contemporary confessional literature. It analyses Agnieszka Jelonek’s West Farragut Avenue, a work rooted in the author’s personal experience. The novel is discussed in terms of the themes of love, death, and the objects left behind by the deceased, understood as repositories of memory. Drawing, among others, on Tony Walter’s model of mourning and Roland Barthes’s literary reflections on loss, the article explores how mourning is narrativized and transformed into literature. It further examines the novel’s self-referential dimension and reflects on the confessional “I” through the concept of “self-writing” as introduced by Michel Foucault. Finally, the article raises the question of the limits of confessionality, a key issue for the contemporary literary reception of confessional writing.

Georges Perec, an author affiliated with Oulipo, is known for his formal experimentation and a marked preoccupation with the cataloging of reality. He articulates the real through objects, spaces, and the minutiae of everyday life, which not only constitute a backdrop but also function as carriers of memory and affect. In Perec’s novel Things, objects effectively assume quasi-narrative agency: they recount the protagonists’ trajectories, disclose their desires, and expose the illusory nature of happiness. The proliferation of material goods does not yield fulfillment; rather, it reveals the emptiness and superficiality inherent in consumerist aspirations. Perec approaches this “game” with methodological rigor – experimenting with form and linguistic material while consistently placing these procedures in the service of a deeper reflection on the human condition. The article juxtaposes Perec’s oeuvre with Vincenzo Latronico’s novel Perfection, which similarly interrogates the relationship between material objects and identity. Both authors demonstrate that objects, despite their materiality, can serve as portals to emotions, memories, and existential crises. Materiality thus becomes a semiotic medium through which the condition of the contemporary subject is articulated.

Poem

The submitted text discusses Konrad Góra's long poem "Nie" as an example of what I am calling the hybrid medium of the poem.

This article analyses Kacper Bartczak’s poetic project through the lens of the relationship between seeing, subjectivity, and the materiality of language. The poem is presented as a dynamic laboratory of critique, in which language does not merely reflect re-ality but actively co-shapes it. The processual nature of Bartczak’s poetic expression is emphasized, highlighting its ability to destabi-lise cognitive and cultural norms. Of particular importance here is the figure of the gaze – understood as a perceptual and affective practice that allows for the revelation and reconfiguration of hierarchies of meaning and power relations embedded in normative discourses. The analysis focuses on the role of the abject, the absence of a stable subject identity, and linguistic operations that blur the boundaries between the private and the political. The work proposes an inter-pretation of Bartczak’s poetry as a form of epistemological resistance to dominant language, opening up space for alternative ways of see-ing and speaking.

This article offers a diffractive reading of Kacper Bartczak’s poetic work alongside Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism. The first section introduces Barad’s diffractive methodology. The author then argues that, in both theory and practice, Bartczak’s poem functions as a kind of diffractive grid – a device through which various material-discursive practices are concentrated-through-dispersion. This framework reveals shared onto-epistemological intuitions between Bartczak and Barad. Like the American theoretical physicist, the Polish poet moves away from individualistic metaphysics and its representationalist assumptions, arriving at the conclusion that subjectivity belongs not to the lyrical “I” speaking in the poem, but to the entire poetic situation. Moreover, the work of the poem not only resembles the work of diffraction, but diffraction itself appears as a kind of poetic labor – what Bartczak calls the “greater poem,” which may be understood as the autopoietic activity of matter.