Urszula Kozioł passed away – poet and honorary doctor of the University of Wrocław
„Pora powiedzieć światu
Adieu
Odchodzę
skoro nawet odeszłam
od siebie samej”
– she wrote in “Ostatni list” from the volume “Raptularz”. For this collection, in 2024, the then 92-year-old poet was awarded the Nike Literary Award. Urszula Kozioł passed away yesterday, 20 July 2025, in Wrocław.
Urszula Kozioł was born on 20 June 1931 in Rakówka. She studied Polish philology at the University of Wrocław. During her university years, she worked as a teacher at a secondary school in Bystrzyca Kłodzka and later taught in Wrocław schools. Between 1965 and 1967, she served as director of the Wrocław Cultural Centre. From 1971 onwards, for more than fifty years, she was associated with the monthly journal Odra as an editor, contributor and columnist. She was a member of the Polish Writers’ Union, the Polish PEN Club and the Association of Polish Writers.
“A great and extraordinary poet has departed – and not only a poet – for she also wrote novels, plays, short stories and for many decades worked at Odra. She was one of the most important figures in Wrocław’s cultural life…” – said dr hab. Paweł Mackiewicz, professor of Polish philology at the University of Wrocław, from the faculty with which the poet maintained a lifelong friendship – and the feeling was mutual. “Ms Kozioł was a representative of the 1956 generation, as was the slightly younger Jacek Łukasiewicz – later a professor at the University – with whom she was close friends. Jacek Łukasiewicz and his wife Teresa were witnesses at Urszula Kozioł’s wedding to Feliks Przybylak – a friend of Łukasiewicz from Leszno, a Germanist, translator and also a professor at the University. After his death in 2010, Kozioł’s poetry took a distinctly different tone; her most poignant poems explored themes of loss, loneliness and disappearance – as in Znikopis, a collection from just a few years ago, where she speaks of loved ones vanishing, at different stages of life, intoning an intimate chant, a kind of ‘nostalgic fado’,” adds literary scholar Paweł Mackiewicz.
She made her poetic debut with the volume Gumowe klocki. Her first novel, Postoje pamięci (1964), depicted her childhood and events during and immediately after the war. In 1971, she published the innovative novel Ptaki dla myśli, and in 1984, the short story collection Noli me tangere. She was the author of numerous award-winning plays, as well as the libretto for the opera Tetyda na Skyros by Domenico Scarlatti. Her broad and rich literary work also included essays and columns.
Urszula Kozioł was a poet highly esteemed by both critics and readers. Her works were translated into over a dozen languages, and her poems appeared in numerous anthologies – notably in Germany (translated by Karl Dedecius and Henryk Bereska), the United States, Serbia and Russia. She received many literary accolades both in Poland and abroad. Her poem Łuskanie grochu won its first prize in 1961 at the Kłodzko Poetic Spring festival. Later she received many other literary, artistic, local and national honours, including the Stanisław Piętak Award, the Władysław Broniewski Award, the City of Wrocław Award, the Kościelski Foundation Award and the Minister of Culture Award. She also received the PEN Club Literary Award, the Silesian Lower Saxony Award, the Eichendorff Prize, and the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis. In 2011 she was awarded the Silesius Poetry Prize and in 2024 the Nike Literary Award. She was made an Honorary Citizen of both Biłgoraj and Wrocław.
A poet of the university
Urszula Kozioł remained closely connected to her Wrocław alma mater throughout her life. During the political thaw of October 1956, she co-edited the student and young intelligentsia magazine Poglądy. At the University of Wrocław, she wrote her master’s thesis Sztuka opowiadania Ludwika Sztyrmera under professor Bogdan Zakrzewski. Her husband (from 1960), the translator, writer and poet Feliks Przybylak, was also a graduate of the University and, from 1986, worked at the Institute of German Studies, where he obtained his habilitation and the title of professor of the humanities. Interestingly, in 2003 – the same year professor Przybylak was awarded the Polish PEN Club Prize – Urszula Kozioł became (only the sixth woman in the university’s history) an honorary doctor of the University of Wrocław.
Let us recall what professor Jacek Łukasiewicz said in his laudatory speech on that occasion, quoting Marta Wyka in his address titled Obywatelka miasta, uczennica uniwersytetu:
“In writing, the poet joins a great conversation carried across centuries – one that allows us to enter the very heart of the values our culture seeks to preserve. Polish culture, European culture, the culture of humanity… She participates fully in this conversation, and trusts it. She hopes her poetry will be trusted too, as a part of that culture.
There is also an intimate bond – with the individual reader, for whom each poem is written. And then there is Wrocław – the place where she lived, wrote and worked. She studied and taught here. Nearly all her work was created here. In 1965, she served as Director of the Centre for Culture and the Arts. From 1971 until now, she co-edited Odra. She chaired the Wrocław branch of the Polish Writers’ Union. During martial law, she was active in the Archbishop’s Charity Committee. She helped found the Association of Polish Writers. Here are the flats she wrote about and lived in with her husband, professor Feliks Przybylak of the University of Wrocław. She spent spring, autumn, winter, and ‘summers in the city’. This city. She wrote most of her books here. She always returned to this Wrocław from her journeys through time and space.”
The poet’s word
Upon receiving her honorary doctorate in the Aula Leopoldina, Urszula Kozioł recalled her student days and many legendary lecturers:
“I am deeply and truly moved by this honour and by this remarkable moment – for it is not every day that a university chooses to bestow such a distinction upon a poet (let alone a woman poet!). I must pinch myself to check whether I’m not simply dreaming.
What am I doing here? What brings me here? I believe it is the word that has brought me – yes, the word has guided me through the decades to this place I now find myself in, at this beautiful moment, in this beautiful hall. I first saw this hall in 1950, when – after completing my A-levels at a humanities secondary school in Zamość – I ended up studying Polish philology not in Warsaw, as planned, but here in Wrocław instead.
Here, alongside a few enthusiasts of the ruling system, I had the fortune of studying under such enlightened guides through the secrets of literary creation and reception as professor Tadeusz Mikulski and, later, professor Bogdan Zakrzewski. I remember them both with deep gratitude.
To this day I can still hear the inspired lectures of dr Stanisław Furmanik, or professor Władysław Floryan, who at exams could surprise a candidate with tricky questions like: ‘What colour was Baroness de Nucingen’s hair in Father Goriot?’ I won’t forget the deep impression made on me by the poetry of the then-unknown Anna Akhmatova – often quoted in lectures, seemingly in defiance of the prevailing schematicism – by Professor Trzynadlowski, who would wink at us as though to say he was fulfilling his duty of obeisance to the ‘big brother’ by drawing from the highest achievements of literature, even if they were frowned upon – as it turned out – by official Soviet propaganda.
And what about professor Bąk? During exam season, we would wait anxiously outside his office, listening to the door slam behind the latest unfortunate who’d failed, only to ask them: ‘What did you mess up on?’ And then, armed with a list of such traps and pitfalls laid by the professor, we’d run straight to the much-missed Bogdan Siciński – later a lecturer and dean at this University, but then our friend and leader – and ask: ‘Bodziu, what’s itacism?’…
Since we are speaking of words – I must admit that as a child, I was mute for quite a long time, which caused some frustration among my family. As was often told during my childhood, one day, despite everyone’s urging, my sister refused to recite a poem in front of the guests. Then, to everyone’s astonishment, I began to recite it myself. ‘She can speak!’ they cried – and saw it as a sign: that my very first spoken words were in verse.”
Text Jacek Antczak, 21.07.2025
