Marta Tomczok

The article proposes the use of a new concept of coal city, which allows describing regions of hard coal mining and post-mining regions by taking into account both their geology as well as their mining and economic culture. Węglopolis (Coal City) is a perspective on literature and art, particularly useful in attempts to assess the past of coal regions and design their future. The author shows the correlation of coalpolises both with the available naming tradition (Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia, polis, megalopolis), as well as with research on the Carbocene, a specified variant of the Anthropocene, in which the role of hard coal in creating and destroying societies, the natural environment and culture is taken into account. 

The article is a proposal to apply the concepts of biorubbles and bioruins in relation to post-industrial sites. On the basis of field observations and critical analysis of concepts such as post-industrial places, technofact, ruin or indunatura, the author tries to propose an approach closer to the non-anthropocentric understanding of landscape, in which the emphasis is primarily on the vital nature of destruction and waste.

In the detailed part, the article proposes an analysis of artistic projects, e.g. Marcin Doś, Mona Tusz and Diana Lelonek, as well as revitalized or abandoned post-industrial sites (including the Grodziec cement plant and the site of the Orzegów coking plant in Ruda Śląska). The author presents the natural overgrowing of post-industrial rubble as an alternative to planned revitalization, which from the point of view of nature’s needs seems to be a much more successful action than the planned reconstruction of the ecosystem.

The article introduces the concept of carbocritics – a reflection on the environmental, ecological and humanistic aspects of modern thinking about hard coal, the prospects for its use and the dangers of burning it and processing it in relation to human health and nature. Reaching for the resources of carbon humanities, I try to show that comparative cultural studies are a natural, overriding perspective of studying the representation of natural resources in visual arts and verbal narratives, thriving and successfully used especially in times of crisis, such as the aforementioned period of introducing the European Green Deal policy in Poland. The use of cultural comparative studies and carbocritics is illustrated by the analysis of poetry of Tomasz Pietrzak, Dorota Szatters and Jakub Pszoniak, authors who are biographically related to Silesia, who in the years 2014–2017 published books partly on environmental and carbon issues.

The following considerations are accompanied by the assumption that the poetry of Szewc should be primarily viewed in the framework of opinions represented by the researchers of the older generation and not in the context of the recent discussions about the place of Polish village in the culture. Influential – to the extent most interesting to the author: the reflection concerning the village – were poet’s memories from the time of his childhood and early adulthood, which coincided with the 60s and the 70s. Most probably the majority of poetic village visions in his poetry was formed as a result of the earliest experiences. The analysed poems come from different periods in poet’s life, some of them are still awaiting their publication. In the article the knowledge regarding village sociology, philosophy of things and the Jewish Kabbalah was utilised. The object of the utmost intensive consideration were the handy peasant tools. The author poses a question as to their presence in the poems, their role and the reason why Szewc remembers them in this particular way. The author also reminiscences over the way the elementary ideas of village, peasantry, folk culture or folklore are being defined, which leads to the remarks of a more general character on what is the folk culture in today’s poetry and in what way its modern version coexists with the tradition.