Death of Wisława Szymborska

Wisława Szymborska died on 1 February 2012 in Kraków, aged 88. A Polish poet, essayist and translator, Szymborska was known for short, witty and deeply humane poems that approached large questions of life, history and chance through everyday objects and ironic observation. Her collections include Calling Out to Yeti, People on a Bridge and Moment, and her poems such as Under One Small Star and The End and the Beginning are widely read in translation. She lived quietly in Krakow, wrote for the magazine Zycie Literackie and published relatively little. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 for poetry that illuminates human reality with ironic precision.

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