The snout of a poem: the visceral worlds of Małgorzata Lebda

Blog series European studies

Author Olga Topol, Curator East European Collections

Mer de Glace. A dying glacier in France. It remains, yet slides into oblivion with each warmer-than-usual day. Each year, the glacier retreats 30 to 40 metres and loses four to five metres of thickness.

Mer de Glace (‘Sea of Ice’) is also the title of a poetry collection by Małgorzata Lebda. It is a work that weaves the threads of life with the frayed strands of mortality—a mosaic of emotions, fleeting moments, and impressions, bound together by the beauty and visceral directness of language that grounds us in our bodies and the world around us.

Lebda’s world is saturated with physical reality: the buzzing of bees, the consciousness of a body and its aches, the erosion of flesh and tissue, the presence of dogs, the sounds of nature, the light of days, and the silence of nights. These words are palpable; after all, they emerge from what the poet calls the “snout of a poem.”

Mer de Glace is a thin, white book—a fragment of a melting world that you cannot help but want to touch. Its texture is like metallic, icy silk, and the cover is crafted to be stroked and felt. Yet, there is a haunting realisation: if you indulge too deeply in this tangible sensuality, the beauty might disintegrate, melting away just as glaciers and human bodies inevitably do.

Lebda brings this same poetic quality to her prose. Her debut novel, Łakome (‘Gluttonous’), grabs the reader by the soul and holds tight. Her vision of a woman caring for her terminally ill grandmother entangles the reader in a cycle of life and death that should be natural but is disturbed by the actions of people. The book is brimming with the palpability and physicality of human and animal bodies, the creatures inhabiting the woods by the grandparents’ house, and the nightmare of a nearby slaughterhouse—the final destination for the village’s farm animals.

This is gut-wrenching yet beautiful prose that deals with the acceptance of transience, the inevitability of death, and the abundance of vitality. It is a story about people, animals, and plants, where man’s acts of violence against nature create a feeling of unease that lasts long after you put the book down. The narrative has hypnotic and oniric qualities; it leaves a permanent imprint on your consciousness, reminding us of the power of language and words.

You can experience Małgorzata Lebda’s evocative work in person at the European Writers’ Festival where she will be a featured guest on the ‘Back to Nature’ panel on Saturday, 16 May, from 12.45 to 14.00, alongside fellow award-winning writers Zdravka Evtimova (Bulgaria) and Carolina Pihelgas (Estonia), chaired by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. This panel will explore how these multi-talented authors use their work to tackle threats such as climate change, violence, and injustice, while offering profound emotional truths and the solace of nature. It is a unique opportunity to engage with the voice behind this melting, beautiful world.