Dead poet talking

Pulit, who runs Radio Krakow and niche stations operating under its umbrella like Off Radio Krakow, standing in one of the broadcast rooms in Krakow, Poland. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

WHEN a state-funded Polish radio station cancelled a weekly show featuring interviews with theatre directors and writers, the host of the programme went quietly, resigned to media industry realities of cost-cutting and shifting tastes away from highbrow culture.

But his resignation turned to fury in late October after his former employer, Off Radio Krakow, aired what it billed as a “unique interview” with an icon of Polish culture, Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature.