Ewa Lipska is one of Poland's foremost poets, emerging in the 1960s as a leading voice in the young generation of New Wave poets and quickly establishing herself as one of the key critical voices of the postwar generation. Over the years, her focus has subtly adjusted itself to match the political upheavals she has witnessed at close hand and her concise 'shorthand' poetry operates on many levels simultaneously. In the words of her translators, to read Ewa Lipska's witty, beautiful and unsettling poetry is a challenge but also a privilege, because as we read she allows us to share in her sophisticated intelligence - sometimes laconic, sometimes scorching, sometimes wistful, always humane - and to feel for a moment that it is our own.