Part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series
Piotr Sommer is a poet, translator, anthology editor and essayist. Born in 1948, he grew up in Otwock, a small town outside of Warsaw, studied English at the University of Warsaw,
and now edits Literatura na Swiecie (literature in the world), a Polish magazine of international writing. He taught poetry at several American universities, including Amherst College, Wesleyan University, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and University of Richmond, Virginia; has been awarded several prizes and fellowships; and has published twelve books of poetry in Polish (including Pamiatki po nas 1980, Kolejny swiat 1983, Czynnik liryczny 1986, Nowe stosunki wyrazów 1997, Piosenka pasterska 1999, Rano na ziemi. Wiersze z lat 1968 – 1998 2009, Dni i noce 2009 and Wiersze ze slów 2009) as well as two books of essays on poetry and translation (Smak detalu i inne ogólniki 1995 and Po stykach 2005). He is also the author of numerous translations from American, English, and Irish poetry, and has had two collections published in translation: Things to Translate and Other Poems (1991), and Ein freier Tag in April (2002), which have appeared in German, Slovak, Slovenian, and English.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art is located at 525 South State Street. For additional information, please call Megan Levad at 734.615.3710, or visit www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/mfa.
The sponsors of the Zell Visiting Writers Series are the Department of English Language and Literature, the Office of the Provost of the University of Michigan, and Helen Zell.
All of the events are free and open to the public.
