Portrait of Edyta B. Cousens beneath a willow.
Author · Poet · Creative Director

E.B. Cousens

Edyta B. Cousens

Not sword, not shield — but quiet companion.

E.B. Cousens writes across the threshold between two languages. Born in Kraków, writing now from Maryland, Edyta B. Cousens is an author, poet, and creative director whose work moves through Polish memory, faith, migration, and the long discipline of staying. She founded Rare Gems Publishing, is completing an MFA in Creative Writing at Hood College, and is the writer and creative director of the animated short film A Long Way to See This. Her sentences begin in English and turn, at the deepest moments, to Polish.

Wszystko wraca do źródła.

Everything returns to the source.

The Film

Animated Short Film · In Development · 2026

A Long Way to See This

Visit the film →

A seagull follows a war-widow and her young son from a grieving London to a newly free Poland, arriving in time to watch a village of children sign their names in gratitude — names that, for some, would become the only proof they ever lived.

Drawn from the 1926 Polish Declarations of Admiration and Friendship, held at the Library of Congress.

Themes

Six rooms I keep returning to — migration and identity, memory and archives, the breaking and the belonging. Each holds its own work, in whatever form it asked to be written.

Przełom / PRL

Communist-era Poland, and the breaking open of it.

A key teaches independence early. It does not teach belonging.

  • Latchkey Generationlyric memoir
  • Bottomless Chestpersonal essay
  • Manifest Wielkanocnyprose poem · Polish
  • Acculturation and Its Perplexitiesnonfiction · translation

Polish Royalty

Wawel, Jadwiga, the crowned and the medieval.

She was ten years old. She had been crowned King of Poland three days before. Not queen — King.

  • The Day of Inheritancehistorical fiction

Devotional

Faith, prayer, and the two languages of Abba.

Polish is the language of pleading. Sometimes the words feel like a knock on a door that does not open.

  • Abba in Two Languageslyric essay
  • Daily Moments with Goddevotional series

Archives

Memory, preservation, and the names that survive.

History is not a speedy highway, but a slow hike up a country road.

Thanatology

Mortality, grief, and the thinness of time.

I left a pathway of footprints on snow — the perfect calculus of continuous passing.

  • A Monster Callsessay
  • Masterclass on the Last Farewellessay
  • Reflectionspoetic prose
  • Just Dancing Aroundpoem

Expressive Arts

Dance-theatre, nostalgia, and the architecture of home.

Nostalgia: from the Greek nostos, homecoming, and algos, pain.

  • The Body in Performance · Traces of HomeMA thesis · dance-film
  • The Confident Performeressay
  • Performing the Imagefilm · practice
  • Birthright to Creationfour-volume work
Edyta B. Cousens beneath a weeping willow at the water's edge.

still becoming —

Representation & publishing inquiries welcome · edyta@ebcousens.com