Building the Barricade

by Anna Świrszczyńska, Piotr Florczyk (Translator), Eavan Boland (Introduction)

Building the Barricade , harrowing and demanding, here takes its place in English among the twentieth century's master works of war-witness.”—Jane Hirshfield Building the Barricade , is poetry of witness, and a lyric account of the sixty-three day Warsaw uprising. Caught between German occupation and the advancing Soviets, the Polish Resistance Home Army barricaded central Warsaw in hopes of liberating the city and gaining Polish sovereignty. Building the Barricade is Anna Świrszczyńska’s first-person account of the atrocities that destroyed over 60% of the Polish capital and left over 100,000 civilians and 16,000 Polish resistance fighters dead. Świrszczyńska had joined the resistance as a military nurse and later “Day and night German bombers raged over the capital, burying the living beneath the rubble.”

240 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2023

About the author

Anna Świrszczyńska (also known as Anna Swir) was a Polish poet whose works deal with themes including her experiences during World War II, motherhood, the female body, and sensuality.

Świrszczyńska was born in Warsaw and grew up in poverty as the daughter of an artist. She began publishing her poems in the 1930s. During the Nazi occupation of Poland she joined the Polish resistance movement in World War II and was a military nurse during the Warsaw Uprising. She wrote for underground publications and once waited 60 minutes to be executed. Czesław Miłosz writes of knowing her during this time and has translated a volume of her work. Her experiences during the war strongly influenced her poetry. In 1974 she published Building the Barricade, a volume which describes the suffering she witnessed and experienced during that time. She also writes frankly about the female body in various stages of life.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. This experience of the young poet of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, captures better than any history book I have ever read the real lives of the people who lived and died in the streets during those days. She captures the feeling, the sounds, the smells, the depravity, the inhumanity, the humanity, the care, the wisdom, the frustration such a moment carries. It is a remarkable witness or testimony. I’m so glad I read it.