Elzbieta Jolanta Wójcik-Leese

Current research

Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, Ph.D., is a writer, translator and scholar who moves between English, Polish and Danish. Her plurilingual texts investigate translanguaging as a means of communicative habitation; her work crosses such disciplines as translation studies, stylistics, text analysis, literary studies (especially contemporary poetry in English), cognitive linguistics and creative writing. As a Fulbright scholar, she has examined the archives of Elizabeth Bishop and published Cognitive Poetic Readings in Elizabeth Bishop: Portrait of a Mind Thinking (De Gruyter Mouton, 2010). She has used psychogeography and flânerie to co-write Metropoetica. Poetry and Urban Space: Women Writing Cities (Seren, 2013), where English spans Polish, Latvian, Slovenian, Icelandic and Finnish. Her texts have featured in such journals as Cordite Poetry Review, Envoi, Long Poem Magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation, Shearsman, Tears in the Fence, The Projectionist’s Playground and in anthologies (including Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, 2014). Her English translations of contemporary Polish poetry have appeared in various anthologies, journals and on the London Underground. Nothing More (Arc, 2013) has been shortlisted for the 2015 Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize. Salt Monody (Zephyr Press, 2006) presents Marzanna Kielar. She has co-edited Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird: Poetry from Poland (Zephyr Press, 2004) and guest-edited Polish issues of Poetry Wales and Modern Poetry in Translation. She is a contributing editor at Poetry Wales, where she regularly reviews translated books. For twenty years she co-edited Przekładaniec, a scholarly journal of literary translation. She has cooperated with the British Council, Polish Cultural Institute (London), Polish Book Institute, Poetry School (London) and Scottish Poetry Library organizing readings, creative writing workshops and literary translation seminars.