Piotr Sommer

Piotr Sommer, born in Walbrzych, Poland, in 1948, is a poet and translator of English, Irish, and American poetry, including work by Robert Lowell and Seamus Heaney. He is the author of two books of essays and eight books of poetry, including one in English, Things to Translate (1991). Continued, from Wesleyan University Press, is Sommer’s ninth book  --  a selection of poems, translated into English, spanning his career to date.

Sommer’s poetry has been translated into Czech, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Slovak, and Swedish and has been published in many anthologies and magazines, including Chicago Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Times Literary Supplement.  He has translated such poets as Robert Bly, Kenneth Koch, William Carlos Williams, and James Wright from English to Polish and has received awards including the Barbara Sadowska Foundation Prize (1998) and the Polish PEN Jan Parandowski Memorial Prize (1997), among others. He also writes poetry for children, and is editor-in-chief of the monthly "Literatura na Swiecie (World Literature)".

Piotr Sommer, who makes his home outside of Warsaw, was recently a Fellow at the National Humanities Center at Triangle Research Park in North Carolina. For an excellent brief characterization of his work, click HERE.