We are delighted to congratulate Łęko Zygmuntówne (former Dorothea Schlegel Artist-in-Residence, Research Area 4: "Literary Currencies") on winning the Grand Prix in the Polish poetry competition O Złotą Pszczołę [For the Golden Bee] with their latest book, Ξένο [Foreign]. The volume is part of the series Leśna pszczoła [Forest Bee], in which the foundation czAR(T) Krzywogońca publishes the works of contemporary authors inspired by nature. 

The texts assembled in Ξένο engage in a masterful play with verbal and typographical ambiguities. Through surprising combinations of words and poetic images, rapid transformations and moments of shocking fragmentation, Zygmuntówne showcases the diversity and uniqueness of beings, but also the commonality and interdependence between them, as Beata Morzyńska-Wrzosek (Kazimierz Wielki University) points out in her insightful preface to the collection.

Some of the poems were composed during Zygmuntówne's residency at EXC 2020 in December 2024. A selection of the volume's collages has recently been published in volume five of the Cluster's con·stel·la·tions series, zeit · brechen — Versatzstücke queerer / trans* Dichtung (Hamburg: Textem Verlag, 2025, open access), which brings together poetry, prose, essays and a conversation by Zsuka Nagy, Łęko Zygmuntówne and Sergej Davydov, offering resistant perspectives on the past, the present and the future.

Łęko Zygmuntówne: Ξένο. czAR(T) Krzywogońca, 2025.

Interested in purchasing the volume? Please contact EXC 2020's publication management or the author for further information!