Poetry, Ecology and the Nonhuman: A Conversation with Paweł Piszczatowski

How can human poetry speak to the nonhuman world? 

Graduate students and faculty are invited to join the Humanities Institute and Melikian Center for a relaxed lunch conversation on the ecologies of poetic expression with Dr. Paweł Piszczatowski in relation to his new book, “Chthonic Shards: Paul Celan’s Poetics of Earth.”

About the book

“Chthonic Shards” explores Paul Celan's poetry through the lens of geology, materiality of landscape, and deep time. It examines how stone, earth and mineral imagery shape his response to historical trauma, silence and loss. Through close readings, the volume shows how Celan's poems function as stratified inscriptions — sites where memory, matter and language become entangled. Combining literary analysis with insights from posthumanism and material ecocriticism, the volume reveals Celan's work as a profound meditation on the Earth's textures, temporalities and the fragile continuities of human experience.

About the speaker

Dr. Piszczatowski is University Professor in the Department of Intermedial and Environmental Studies and Head of the Environmental Humanities Center at the University of Warsaw, Poland, as well as the Editor-in-chief of the journal Transpositiones.

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