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Wislawa Szymborska

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Poet

The Resume

    (July 2, 1923-February 1, 2012)
    Born in Kornik, Poland
    Wrote poetry collections ‘Calling Out to Yeti’ (1957), ‘No End of Fun’ (1967), ‘Could Have’ (1972), ‘People of the Bridge’ (1986), ‘View with a Grain of Sand’ (1996) and ‘Here’ (2009)
    Won Nobel Prize for Literature (1996)
    Inspired Krzysztof Kieslowski to write and direct ‘Red’ (1994)

Why she might be annoying:

    Her father paid her to write poems when she was five.
    She moved to Krakow at age eight and has rarely left the city since.
    She knows only one English word: ‘whiskey.’
    Once an ardent Communist, she wrote many gushing odes to Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin.
    Unlike her more outspoken contemporaries, she survived the Cold War relatively unscathed.
    She complained that winning the Nobel Prize interfered with her privacy.
    A Polish punk rocker called Cora set some of her poetry to music.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She finished her studies at an underground school during World War 2.
    Her earliest poems were rejected by official censors for being too ‘bourgeois.’
    Her apartment became a salon for Polish writers during the 40s and 50s.
    She eventually renounced Communism and compared Stalin to the Abominable Snowman.
    Her later poems were apolitical and skeptical.
    She joined the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s.
    Lech Walesa praised her for being ‘so modest as a person and so great in spirit and writing.’

Credit: Georgina


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 70.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 15 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 103 Votes: 71.84% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 29 Votes: 51.72% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 65 Votes: 41.54% Annoying