“I live a lot in many places”: Images of everyday life in Krystyna Miłobędzka’s poetry

This article offers a reading of the poetry of Krystyna Miłobędzka (who since her debut in 1960 won high acclaim for her innovative, terse verse) from the perspective of everyday life, a sociocultural concept which brings into focus the intersection of the ordinary (the texture of people's daily lives) and activities or ideas that impinge on it. This study examines four such practices in turn. They are writing, movement, sense of place (multiple homes), and relating to the Other. Writing affects the sphere of everyday life presented in the poems in two different ways that can be subsumed under the metaphors of ‘a cage’ and indwelling. The study of movement reveals that it is interconnected with the sacred and the realm of multiple homes. Finally, the sphere of relations with the Other is controlled by metaphors related to hunger, home, sewing and speech. The main aim of the article is to explore the interconnections between these four domains and to demonstrate that the concept of everyday life holds the key to the appreciation of Krystyna Miłobędzka’s poetry.