WEDNESDAY MARCH 17 7.30 pm
Nightingale Theatre @ Grand Central
Surrey Street Brighton

£6/£3 Tickets 01273 242850 or on the door in association with South Pole and The Polish Cultural Institute

Piotr Sommer was born in 1948 in Walbrzych, Poland. MA in English (University of Warsaw), in 1973. Since 1976, Anglo-American poetry editor, at Literatura na Swiecie (Literature in the World), a monthly promoting foreign literatures in Polish translations (since 1993, editor in chief). He has taught (both: as Visiting Writer and Visiting Translator) mostly at American Universities (Wesleyan University, Amherst College, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Mount Holyoke College, University of Notre Dame), but also at the University of Warsaw, the University of Krakow, as well as at Arvon Foundation (England).

He published eight books of poems in Polish W krzesle, 1977 (Inside the Chair); Pamiatki po nas (What We are Remembered By), 1980; Przed snem [Before sleep - poems for children], 1981; Kolejny Swiat (Subsequent World), 1983; Czynnik liryczny, 1986; Czynnik liryczny i inne wiersze (Lyric factor and other poems), 1988), Nowe stosunki wyrazów (New Relations of Words, selected poems], 1997; Piosenka pasterska (Shepard's Song), 1999, as well as two books in translation - in English: Things to Translate and other poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1991) and in German: Ein freier Tag im April: Gedichte (Edition Korrespondenzen, 2002); another one is to appear in Slovenia in 2004. Piotr Sommer has himself translated some contemporary American, English, Irish and Scottish poets into Polish (among others: John Ashbery, John Berryman, John Cage, Kenneth Koch, Robert Lowell, Frank O`Hara, Charles Reznikoff; Ciaran Carson, Douglas Dunn, Paul Durcan, D. J. Enright, Mark Ford, Ian Hamilton, Seamus Heaney, Kathleen Jamie, Patrick Kavanagh, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon).

He edited a few individual volumes and anthologies of poetry in translation, among them Antologia nowej poezji brytyjskiej [an anthology of 22 British poets], 1983; Zapisy rozmów: wywiady z poetami brytyjskimi [13 British poets interviewed, with an annex of poetry translations], 1985; Szesciu poetów pólnocnoirlandzkich [an anthology of six poets from the North of Ireland], 1993; Artykuly pochodzenia zagranicznego [an anthology of articles on, proceeded by translations from, seven American poets], 1996; and a book of literary criticism Smak detalu i inne ogólniki [articles on Polish and foreign contemporary poetry and translation], 1995.