Contemporary Polish poetry for children

Abstract

This article mainly deals with the history of the contemporary Polish poetry for children (end of XX century — beginning of XXI). The author shows how contemporary children’s poetry is linked with the traditional one (and also some folklore forms), characterizes the creative styles of several contemporary poets (J. Twardowski, Z. Beszczyńska, J. Kulmowa, W. Oszajca), and points out several breaks from the tradition. The author names two main streams in children’s contemporary poetry as “Lyric poetry” and “Playing with words”, and speaks in detail of their creative approaches and readers’ pragmatics. Especially interesting is the comparison of contemporary children’s poetry samples and the classical ones (Jan Brzechwa, Janina Porazińska, Maria Konopnicka, Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina, Julian Tuwim), and also linking with the tradition of religious and ritual poetry. The authors looks at contemporary poetry for children from diacena have taken place.