‘Does it taste good, this chrysanthemum?’ The child asked the stone and put in her mouth the petals kneaded to a ball, a miniature cabbage. Each chrysanthemum had such a ball at its centre, but this was the roundest and most golden of all. It crunched like cabbage, but tasted of cemetery.
‘Hot,’ the child stuck her finger into the grey mound heaped in the ashpit.
‘Frost,’ she said and licked the frosted gate.
“Blood,’ she added.
She helped herself to some soil, and when she finished chewing it, she said:
‘Black.’
She wrote with a stick on her body: ‘cherries,’ ‘wizards,’ ‘mornings.’ Out of the words vanishing from her skin she could take smaller words. With the same stick she could prise the sleep from a cherry.
That’s how the child fed the stone to let it live.
Popiół
– Smakuje ci chryzantema? – zapytało dziecko kamień i włożyło do ust płatki zbite w kulkę podobną do miniaturowej kapusty. Każda chryzantema miała taką w środku, ta jednak była najokrąglejsza i najbardziej złota. Chrupała jak kapusta, ale smakowała cmentarzem.
– Gorące – dziecko wsadziło palec w szarą górę, która usypy-wała się w popielniku.
– Mróz – powiedziało i polizało oszronioną furtkę. – Krew – dodało.
Poczęstowało się ziemią, a gdy ją przeżuło, powiedziało:
– Czarne.
Pisało patykiem na ciele: „czereśnie”, „czarodzieje”, „poranki”. Ze znikających ze skóry słów można było powyjmować mniejsze. Tym samym patykiem wydłubać śnienie z czereśni.
Tak dziecko karmiło kamień, żeby żył.
Fragment of "To Feed a Stone" by Bronka Nowicka, Biuro Literackie publishing house
Translated from the Polish by Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese.
Bronka Nowicka graduated from the Film, Theatre and TV Direction Department at the Polish State Film School in Łódź, and from the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where she now is a PhD student. Her fields of inspiration, exploration, and creation include human-thing relations, images in motion, language, encounters. She is looking for new media in the field of art; she uses a computer tomography scanner as a film and graphic tool.
She creates videos, tomo-videos, video installations, photographs. She took part in exhibitions at the International Centre for Graphic Arts in Kraków, the Susanne Burmester Gallery in Germany (in Putbus, on the Rügen Island), the Małopolska Garden of Art in Kraków, the Promotional Gallery at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the Fine Arts College in Kazimierz Dolny, the Art Centre in Sosnowiec, the Ducal Castle in Szczecin, the Media Art Faculty Gallery in Warsaw, the Kunstnernes Hus during the Festival for Digital and Visual Poetry in Norway (Oslo), The Trubarjeva Hiša Literature in Slovenia (Ljubljana). She participated in the international literary festivals, including Prima Vista (Tartu, Estonia), Kosmopolis (Barcelona, Spain), Slovenian Book Days (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Festival of the European Short Story (Zagreb – Rijeka, Croatia). She took part in interdisciplinary artistic projects, interalia Corresponcences & Interventions, Open Studio of Mechanisms for an Entente, Labirynt Wolności (the Labirynth of Freedom); interdisciplinary scientific conferences, eg. “Posttechnological experiences. Art-Science-Culture” at the HAT Centre (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań). She is the author of publications on new means of narration in the field of video art (e.g. in Załącznik Kulturoznawczy, Wiadomości ASP). She is the director of theatrical plays (e.g. “Shining City” – Studio Theatre in Warsaw, “Look, The Sun Is Going Down” – the Adam Mickiewicz Theatre in Częstochowa and the Na Woli Theatre in Warsaw, “Theatre de compose ou I'homme belle” – the Jaracz Theatre in Olsztyn, “Far Away” – TVP Kultura). She is a screenwriter and director of television programs: educational and travel series. In 2015 the Biuro Literackie publishing house published her poetic book “Nakarmić kamień” (“To Feed a Stone”) that was awarded the third prize in the competition Złoty Środek Poezji (The Golden Mean of Poetry) as the best poetic debut, and the prestigious Literary Nike Award for the best book of the year. From 2017 Bronka Nowicka is one of New Voices from Europe – the project implemented by Literature Across Frontiers and European Platform for Literary Exchange, Translation and Policy Debate.
