Bilingual poetry to be read at Jaszczury Club, Americans and Poles to meet

 Jaszczury Club is holding the annual Polish-American poetry meeting on Thursday, June 14 at 18:00. This year?s guests will include C.K. Williams, Adam Zagajewski, Cecillia Wolloch and Krystyna Lenkowska.
Charles Kenneth Williams, born in 1936, is one of the most renowned poets in the U.S. He received numerous awards, including the National Critics Circle Award for his collection ?Flesh and Blood? (1987), the National Book Award for ?The Singing? (2003), and the Pulitzer Prize for ?Repair? in 2000.
Since the first poem of his debut collection in 1969, ?Lies,? he has written about injustice, suffering and violence, but his poetry breaks the borders of literature engage. In his writing there is no simple boundary between the ?public? and the ?private? life. This style has often made his readers dub him as the ?political poet.?
Apart from writing original works, Williams also works as a translator of poetry ? among his translations is Adam Zagajewski?s ?Canvas? (1991, with Renata Gorczynski and Benjamin Ivry).
Zagajewski, born in 1945, first became famous as a leading poet of the Polish ?New Wave? (?Nowa Fala?) movement of 1968, and remains one of the most important contemporary Polish poets. Some even predict him as Poland?s next candidate for the Nobel Prize. His work defies the postmodern belief that only shape of the language matters ? his poems, devoid of neologisms, focus mostly on meaning.
Content-wise, he says, ?What really interests me is the interweaving of the historical and cosmic world,? and adds that their interweaving is a mystery. Apart from ?Canvas,? his poem and essay collections like ?Mysticism for Beginners? (1997), ?Solidarity, Solitude? (1990) or ?Two Cities? (2000) have also been translated into English. The two authors, accompanied by poets and translators Cecilia Wolloch and Krystyna Lenkowska, will read their works in their original languages followed by their respective translation to Polish and English. Jerzy Illg, from the Znak Publishing House, will be moderator of the meeting.
 
The Jaszczury Club is on Rynek Glowny 8.