Jean Mary Ward was born on 10th June 1956 in a small place in King’s Lynn, east part of the UK. She is English but her family originated from Scotland. She has two siblings: a sister living in the US and a brother who emigrated with his family to Australia. When she was a child, professor Ward’s family moved several times which had an impact on her later life. Jean Ward’s parents worked in education, they were both school teachers.Since her early childhood, Jean was interested in literature and that was the main reason why she chose English literature at Oxford University as her major.
After graduation she became a teacher. At school, where she worked, she befriended a Polish Englishman whose parents left Poland and settled in the UK. That was her first contact with Polishness. She came to Poland for the first time in 1980s to participate in a language camp. During her short stay she made many friends, and she still is in touch with some of them. This very positive experience made Jean Ward return to Poland several times and her stays became longer. For one year she had been living in Warsaw, teaching English. After that she moved to Gdańsk where she has been living since.
She is an associate professor at the University of Gdańsk where she defended her doctoral thesis and was granted a postdoctoral degree. She works at the Faculty of Languages, at the Institute of English and American Studies. Her passion, apart from literature, is classical music. Jean plays the cello.
Interview by Iwona Demska on 12th December 2014 in Gdańsk.
We reached the campsite that we were to be in charge of. It was in Brzesko, near Cracow and the youth that we were supposed to teach had already gathered. In the first evening a few people offered me a walk into town so that I could see it. Everyone spoke English and it… they spoke really well. And everyone knew so much, at least I thought so at the time, about MD, about our culture and I knew nothing about them. They were so… so… They really wanted to tell me about their culture, about themselves. And while we were talking and walking around the town, it was maybe eight or nine p.m. and they were just telling me how bad it was in their country with the politics, about the militia, I was just looking around to see if someone else was listening to us. I thought that someone will be eavesdropping what they were saying, they will catch us and take us to prison. Nothing like that happened, nobody cared. They just… Maybe… maybe but they were speaking English and that still attracted some attention. Well, they weren’t afraid and I was a little surprised by that. Surely, it was a clash with my ideas that one had to watch what one was saying in such a country. I remember that at the time they must have been organizing some meeting during that camp for the local politicians, communists. Those, who were to speak at the gathering, came and it was a real surprise to me that nobody was listening to them. The youth was just sitting there and talking to each other, not paying attention to what the politician was saying. It was disrespectful and it really surprised me.
It may sound funny but there was no time when I made the decision that I am here and I’ll stay here. I came here, I had a life, I was supposed to live here, work here, speak with people and make friends. I started to organize my life here and I felt that this is where I belong, this is my home. So there was no time that I had to make a decision that I’ll stay. Back then… Well, maybe I need to stress this that back then I had really one official possibility. Every year I had to apply for a visa. For a number of years I had been given one-year visa because that was the only possibility for me back then. After a few years, maybe seven or eight, people started telling me that maybe I should apply for permanent residence because it would be more convenient for me so that I wouldn’t have to submit all documents every day, every year I mean. But actually this permanent residence application was quite troublesome because when I started asking about it everyone in the passport office discouraged me to apply for it. I really had to fight for that permanent residence. And maybe this awareness that even if I had thought about it earlier that I had to… now I want to make the decision that I’m staying here for the rest of my life, back then such a decision was impossible because Poland would not let me make such a decision. Poland, back then, allowed me to submit my documents once a year to get a visa. Well, it didn’t invite me for a longer period so… such a decision was out of the question.
I feel that I’m not a kind of an observer anymore who looks on it from the outside and says that it was better in the past or that back then I was disillusioned but now I know the truth. I don’t feel like an outside observer anymore. I feel that I’m living inside it. Well, maybe it’s always like that when one gets to know something or someone better and it seems to me that you can say that. I can remember this first impressions of Poles and I think they were mostly correct. I think I wouldn’t say that my first impressions were incorrect. Of course, I encountered various unpleasant situations and different people that didn’t want to help me and other people as well. But those unpleasant people were in the minority. I think that my first impressions proved to be true that this nation is very open and interested in people. They are very hospitable but not just in an external way but that they really take people in. Surely, they have… I suppose some annoying features but generally… Sometimes their ability to speak freely is just too much for me. But I’m getting used to it bit by bit. I just don’t pay attention to it, I’m so used to it now, I… I just accept it as normal. And if someone is… has annoying manners or speaks in a way that annoys me, it can happen everywhere. And it’s not connected with the fact that he is a Pole.
I felt that something is not right that I’m here and I don’t have the right to vote and I don’t have the right to vote there, either. It’s like I’m voiceless, I am a person and a citizen of, let’s say, Europe. And maybe that was some factor that I just wanted to… I applied for permanent stay and citizenship. But I submitted my citizenship application provided that I could keep my English, I mean British citizenship as well. If they’d told me that this dual citizenship is impossible, then I would cancel my application. I would stay voiceless.
Jean Ward: For the last few years I’ve made more contacts because of my work. I keep in touch with people and I feel like I belong in those two countries and it’s important for me not to cut myself from it, nor from Poland.
Interviewer: So you have two homelands, is that it?
Jean Ward: Yes, yes, definitely.
Interviewer: So you don’t think that homeland is only where one was born, do you?
Jean Ward: No, no. It’s a place that you feel… you feel attached to somehow. And I’m testing it on myself, how I feel when someone says bad things about a given country. And in both cases… maybe I even dislike it more when someone says bad things about Poland. I feel like I want to defend both and even to defend Poland more because I have more occasions to do it, I guess. People don’t attack the UK so much. But if they do, I feel it too, I feel anxious.
We reached the campsite that we were to be in charge of. It was in Brzesko, near Cracow and the youth that we were supposed to teach had already gathered. In the first evening a few people offered me a walk into town so that I could see it. Everyone spoke English and it… they spoke really well. And everyone knew so much, at least I thought so at the time, about MD, about our culture and I knew nothing about them. They were so… so… They really wanted to tell me about their culture, about themselves. And while we were talking and walking around the town, it was maybe eight or nine p.m. and they were just telling me how bad it was in their country with the politics, about the militia, I was just looking around to see if someone else was listening to us. I thought that someone will be eavesdropping what they were saying, they will catch us and take us to prison. Nothing like that happened, nobody cared. They just… Maybe… maybe but they were speaking English and that still attracted some attention. Well, they weren’t afraid and I was a little surprised by that. Surely, it was a clash with my ideas that one had to watch what one was saying in such a country. I remember that at the time they must have been organizing some meeting during that camp for the local politicians, communists. Those, who were to speak at the gathering, came and it was a real surprise to me that nobody was listening to them. The youth was just sitting there and talking to each other, not paying attention to what the politician was saying. It was disrespectful and it really surprised me.
It depends on the context and the content of your mind. At the moment I am thinking in Polish. If you asked me something what I haven’t experienced in Polish, I would have to look a little and I suppose I would start thinking in English. Sometimes, when I’m thinking of something what… about a conversation, I can’t remember whether that was in Polish or English. It’s like its content comes in through those two languages. It’s happening automatically most of the times. Of course, there is some factor that destabilizes it all, then I pay attention to the language. And when someone… when someone calls me, for instance, on Christmas Eve from Poland. And when I am functioning without this language for a couple of days then it seems odd for me for a while. It doesn’t happen when I start thinking in English. Here, it never seems odd to me when I start speaking English. But sometimes, when I am devoid of Polish for some time, I have to make an effort to start using it, but it’s not that hard really.
