The article examines the role of translation in the literary output of Polish writer Julia Hartwig. An esteemed translator of French and American poetry, Hartwig treated her work in this capacity as an important element of her own artistic and readerly formation. The analyses carried out in the article show that she succeeded in finding her own individual style of translation, and that the latter can be described by means of such figures as alchemy, mirror-image, moving house, encounter and conversation.