A Tribute to Professor Dorota Filipczak

Abstract

The article presents the life and work of the late Dorota Filipczak, focusing primarily on her role as a poet and the author of six poetry collections, along with one selection from her entire body of work. It takes the form of personal reflections from the author and includes their interpretations of Filipczak’s poetry. The article touches upon her struggles with the identity of Łódź, a city described as challenging and peculiar, with a “colonial-like past.” It also explores how poetry became the ideal medium for Filipczak to express her worldview. The dominant themes in her poetry include family, love and eroticism, history and culture, Christianity and feminism, Łódź, and nature. The subject of these works is a woman with a strong biological and cultural identity, deeply aware of her gender, sensitive to its uniqueness and role in both history and relationships with men. Selected poem excerpts illustrate the article’s arguments and showcase the distinctive, individual style of Filipczak’s poetry. Professionally, she was a professor of English philology at the University of Łódź.