Ecology, Trauma and Corporeity in the Works by Małgorzata Lebda

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the autobiographical texture of the works by Małgorzata Lebda, a prominent representative of ecopoetry, who addresses topics such as trauma, memory, illness, and death against a background of untamed nature that permeates and envelops everything. A rarely idyllic rural landscape is constantly present in Lebda’s poetry collec¬tions and in her debut novel, Łakome [Greedy] (2023). In the latter work, the symbiosis with nature, animals, plants, trees, and the elements is complemented by a delicate description of illness, the acceptance of the unfolding of things, and the love for what dies and for what is alive, in an endless cycle of events. Nature is an autobiographical space that encompasses the writer’s daily life, becoming the semantic and symbolic counterpart of an authentic geographic place and its imagery, at once both oneiric and real. One can detect a refined path of awareness in Lebda’s works: it shifts from the expe¬rience of mourning to a meditated and deep acceptance of illness and death in Łakome, as a trauma and an unavoidable aspect of the life of every human being who belongs to nature, an ecosystem with a complex balance.