Description
Wayword
by Anna Polonyi
$14.99, paper
978-1-63534-154-6
2017
Wayword traces a path along the northern edge of Spain to the pilgrim’s goal of Santiago de Compostela. With a poem for each stop on the road, Anna Polonyi’s first chapbook serves at once as a sensual field-guide, an intimate meditation on walking, and a textured album of voices, whether human, animal or elemental, encountered along the way.
Anna Polonyi is a Franco-American-Hungarian poet, writer and journalist. Born to Hungarian parents in Boston, MA, she grew up in Strasbourg, France. A Harvard graduate, she is the former recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and the 2015 Sylvia Beach Short Fiction Prize. She holds a Master’s degree from Sciences Po Paris and her journalistic work has appeared with The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Radio France Internationale, The Irish Times, Times of India, Die Tageszeitung, The European, amongst others. Wayword is her first chapbook. She lives in Paris, France.
Anna Polonyi –
Wayword is an exploration of spirituality through distance and solitude, written along the ancient pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago. Polonyi was working as a news journalist in Paris when she decided to walk alone for a month to relearn what distance and time felt like outside of the hyper-connected 24-hour news-cycle. Her only company was a 22-pound (10 kg) backpack and an old copy of Poetry magazine. As the composer Gustav Mahler allegedly said, ‘If you think you are boring your audience, slow down.’ Polonyi has tried to slow down just enough.
Anna Polonyi –
Author’s Bio:
Anna Polonyi is a Franco-American-Hungarian poet and writer based in Paris, France. A Harvard graduate, she is the former recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and the 2015 Sylvia Beach Short Fiction Prize. Her poems have or will soon appear with Belleville Park Pages, Canopic Jar, Two Words For, Paris Lit Up Press and Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel. She is currently working on her first novel about a man-eating creature in 18th century rural France. It is based on a true story.
Arlene Gay Levine –
Anna Polonyi’s collection WAYWORD deftly combines the unflinching eye of a journalist and the introspective vision of a young woman traveling alone on pilgrimage. The Way, as the Camino de Santiago is called, is arduous on many levels. Despite the challenges of the landscape and the rigors of dealing with people of all sorts along the road, Polonyi quantifies with beauty and skill what it is like to undertake such a journey. Her use of concrete poetry permits the Camino to flow visually through the pages, reminiscent of the poet’s journey through dark and light both on this particular expedition and in life. As she explains in her poem Aviles, “There is nothing like treading lightly on this good earth bearing nothing but what you can carry away.” Step by difficult step, with humor and compassion, the poet invites us to accompany her on an extraordinary passage of individuation.