Foreign Languages and Literatures and The Center for Bilingual/Bicultural Studies are hosting a month-long festival of film, poetry and politics titled "Beyond Exile: Central European Writing and Film."
On Monday, Oct. 4, poet, novelist and essayist Adam Zagajewski, called the "preeminent Polish poet of his generation" by The New Republic, will present a reading at 7 p.m. in Room 32-155 in the Stata Center.
Zagajewski was born in Lvov in 1945, a largely Polish city that became a part of the Soviet Ukraine shortly after his birth. His ethnic Polish family, which had lived for centuries in Lvov, was forcibly repatriated to Poland. His most recent books are "Canvas and Mysticism for Beginners," "Two Cities and Another Beauty" and "Without End: New and Selected Poems," which was nominated for a 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award. Zagajewski is also the author of a book of essays and literary sketches.
On Tuesday, Oct. 5, Zagajewski will join fellow poets Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate 1997-2000, and Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature, in a conversation titled "Poetry and Politics" at 6 p.m. at Boston University's Photonics Center (8 St. Mary's St.). Pinsky and Walcott are both professors of English and Creative Writing at Boston University.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 29, 2004 (download PDF).