Szymborska's father was the steward on a count's family estate. When she was eight, the family moved to Kraków, and she attended high school there. Between 1945 and 1948 she studied literature and sociology at Kraków's Jagiellonian University. Her first published poem, “Szukam słowa” (“I Seek the Word”), appeared in a Kraków newspaper in March 1945. Dlatego żyjemy (1952; “That's Why We Are Alive”), her first volume of poetry, was an attempt to conform to Socialist Realism, the officially approved literary style of Poland's communist regime. In 1953 she joined the editorial staff of Życie Literackie (“Literary Life”), a weekly magazine of intellectual interests, and remained there until 1981. During this period she gained a reputation not only as a poet but also as a book reviewer and translator of French poetry. In the 1980s she wrote for the underground press under the pseudonym Stancykówna and also wrote for a magazine in Paris.

Between 1952 and 1993 Szymborska published more than a dozen volumes of poetry. She later disowned the first two volumes, which contain poems in the style of Socialist Realism, as not indicative of her true poetic intentions. Her third volume, Wołanie do Yeti (1957; “Calling Out to Yeti”), marked a clear shift to a more personal style of poetry and expressed her dissatisfaction with communism (Stalinism in particular). Subsequent volumes, such as Sól (1962; “Salt”), Sto pociech (1967; “No End of Fun”), and Wszelki wypadek (1972; “Could Have”), contain poems noteworthy for their precise, concrete language and ironic detachment. Selections of her poems were translated into English and published as Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems (1981), People on a Bridge: Poems (1990), View with a Grain of Sand (1995), and Nothing Twice: Selected Poems (1997). Poems, New and Collected, 1957–1997 appeared in 1998.