This post is also available in: polski (Polish)

Is loneliness the color blue? I wonder this on the blue tram number 18 when I travel to Popowicki Park in Wrocław.

45 blue ones, placed in the square just below the apartment blocks, are a spatial interpretation of Stanisław Dróżdż’s poem “Solitude” created by Wroclaw conceptual artist Barbara Kozlowska.

Young people from the Hurtownia Poetry Group sit on the backs of the blue ones. Alicja sits under the one as if under a palm tree. I lean against the blueness as if against a soft wall. Antek walks from one one to the other. Michalina turns her face to the sun as if sunbathing.

There is warmer among the blue ones. A time between winter and spring. You can also hide there effectively. The sound resonates plushly. A child runs through the labirint. It’s just a shame someone spray-painted some of the outdoor sculpture. But those pink dots have meaning for poets too.

We write together, poems in green and blue. Because yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. So, Ireland are reflected in us like the Atlantic on rocks, on sand, on myth, or on the gravel scattered beneath the blue ones.

We laugh, pouring out words from our heads, our imaginations, our loneliness. We can be islands and yet a larger land at the same time. Green, blue, orange, gray, cold, late afternoon. Or maybe the answer is turquoise? Wojtek transforms his poem it into hip-hop, which resonates perfectly with the landscape of the hood.

Even though we may not feel lonely right now, loneliness is with us all the time. I hear it in the caw, caw, caw. Are those crows, or maybe ravens? Antek wonders. It’s good that it is there. Because Solitude reminds us to stop. To feel. Even if we’re like blue ones, facing the same direction in a crowd. We’re timidly calling out to something. Who can we tell it to? Can we turn everything into words?

In his visual and experimental poetry, Stanisław Dróżdż touches upon the beginning of the end. The word – poem Forgetting gradually disappears. Life and death run parallel. When I received his Concept-Shapes.Concrete Poetry with his ideaforms from my niece, I didn’t know how to approach them.

Only when poet Justyna Paluch gathered us at the installation of blue ones did I open myself to these word-images. Then I began to immerse myself in the depths of the ones. Not only in Popowicki Park but in other parts of Wrocław. Searching for a personal city anew.

After returning to Ireland, I spread the black-and-white boards on the ocean shore. At times, they seem like a blurs of time. Yet, duration is here and now. And the sun is near, yet far away. Just like us. Wroclaw – Galway. I wait until we meet again.

*Concrete Poetry consists in isolating the word, making it autonomous. In isolating it from the linguistic context, as well as from the context of the non-linguistic reality, so as to make the word signify in itself and unto itself. In concrete poetry form is determined by content, and content by form. Traditional poetry describes an image. Concrete poetry writes with it. – Stanislaw Dróżdż