EU for You

The seventh and last event in our “Poetry and Politics” series features Polish poet Tomasz Różycki and American poet Major Jackson. The reading and conversation took place at Boston University on October 1, 2008. The event was moderated by Irena Grudzinska Gross, former director of the Institute for Human Sciences, who introduces the poets. It aired on WBUR on March 16, 2008; we are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for You.

Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry: Hoops (Norton: 2006) and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia: 2002), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Hoops was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literature – Poetry. His third volume of poetry Holding Company is forthcoming from W.W. Norton. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He served as a creative arts fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and as the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at University of Massachusetts-Lowell. Major Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont and a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He serves as the Poetry Editor of the Harvard Review.

Tomasz Różycki has published six books of poetry, including Colonies, The Forgotten Keys, and the book-length poem Twelve Stations, winner of the Koscielski Prize. He has been nominated twice for the Nike Prize, Poland’s most important literary award. He lives in his hometown, Opole, with his wife and two children.

Links:

Major Jackson’s website
Tomasz Różycki poems at AGNI online

 

 EU for You #22 - Writing Is a Celebration: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The fifth event in our “Poetry and Politics” series (but unfortunately, only the fourth podcast, as we’ve lost the recording of Andrei Codrescu’s memorable reading on November 2, 2006) features the return of Adam Zagajewski to Boston University. The podcast is a recording of Zagajewski’s March 19, 2007 reading at the Institute for Human Sciences. The event aired on WBUR radio’s “World of Ideas” program on July 29, 2007. We are grateful to WBUR for making the recording available to EU for You.

Adam Zagajewski was born in Lwów, Poland in 1945. He spent his childhood in Silesia and then in Cracow, where he graduated from Jagiellonian University. He first became established as one of the leading poets of the Generation of ‘68′ or the Polish New Wave (Nowa Fala). Among his collections in Polish are Pragnienie (1999), Ziemia ognista (1994), Jechac do Lwowa (1985), Sklepy miesne (1975), and Komunikat (1972).His English collections of poetry include Without End: New and Selected Poems (2003, translated by Clare Cavanaugh), Mysticism for Beginners (1997, translated by Clare Cavanaugh), Tremor (1985, translated by Renata Gorczynski), and Canvas(1991, translated by Renata Gorczynski, B. Ivry, and C.K. Williams). Zagajewski’s honors and awards include the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a fellowship from the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, a Prix de la Libert, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

 

 EU for You #20 - A Few Magical Moments: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The second in a series of seven podcasts on the theme of “Poetry and Politics” featuring recordings of conversations with poets moderated by Institute Director Irena Grudsinska Gross at Boston University between 2004 and 2007. This podcast is a recording of an April 2005 reading and conversation with Polish poet Piotr Sommer and American poet Rosanna Warren. Sommer is also a translator of contemporary English-language poetry (Frank O’Hara, Charles Reznikoff, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney) into Polish. He reads poems from Continued, his (then) new book of poetry in English translation. Rosanna Warren is Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She reads some of her newer poems as well as a selection from her book Departure.

Warren acknowledges the need for a national myth to create a national literature -  yet she rebels against nationalism. She says there is “Another Republic” (referring to the anthology of European and Latin American poetry edited by Charles Simic and Mark Strand) where she longs to be a citizen, implying there is a way in which poetry, for all its embeddedness in culture, transcends national borders. Sommer adds that it transcends such categories as “classical” as well. He makes the point that English is a language without a nationality, so that his point may be particularly true of poetry in English.

Profile of Piotr Sommer at culture.pl

Profile of Rosanna Warren at poets.org

 

 EU for You #18 - From Elsewhere: Poetry and National Borders : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download