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�¾���ł���ɲ� Szymborska, the Polish poet, won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

And he knew I’d been translating Wislawa Szymborska with his longtime friend, the great poet and translator Stanislaw Barańczak.

Szymborska’s “Funeral” consists of seemingly random fragments apparently overheard in a churchyard or cemetery.

Back then it was dedicated to the memory of the very poet I’d been translating when we met, his friend Wislawa Szymborska.

But Alissa also draws heavily from a range of other works, from Homer’s “Iliad” to poems by Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney and Mahmoud Darwish.