March 28, 2006
Media Contact: Anne Halsey (312) 799.8016; ahalsey@poetryfoundation.org

POETRY OFF THE SHELF
Adam Zagajewski and Clare Cavanagh

Chicago — In celebration of National Poetry Month, poet Adam Zagajewski and translator Clare Cavanagh will read from their work on Thursday, April 27th, at 6:00 p.m. at the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, in Chicago.

Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, this is the ninth event in a series of Poetry Off the Shelf readings and conversations. The program regularly makes contributors to Poetry magazine available to discuss essential themes in their work and answer audience questions.

What: Poetry Off the Shelf: Adam Zagajewski and Clare Cavanagh
When: Thursday, April 27th, 6:00pm
Where: The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street
Reception followed by reading and discussion
Admission is free, but seating is limited and reservations are required.
Call (312) 787-7070.

One of the leading poets of the Polish New Wave, Adam Zagajewski has written novels and essays as well as volumes of verse, including Mysticism for Beginners and Without End: New and Selected Poems. Among his many honors are fellowships from the Berliner Kunstleprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize, and the Prixe de la Liberté. Born in 1945, in Lvov, Zagajewski was forced to relocate with his family to Silesia in western Poland when the Soviets invaded his native town. He went on to graduate from Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Zagajewski currently lives in Paris and teaches one term each year at the University of Houston.

Sharing the stage with Adam Zagajewski is his award-winning translator, Clare Cavanagh, who is also the translator for Wislawa Szymborska's poetry and essays. She wrote Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, winner of the 1997 AATSEEL Award for outstanding scholarship. Currently she is working on an authorized biography of Czeslaw Milosz. Cavanagh teaches in the Department Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University.

For further details, and to sign up to receive email notices of Poetry Foundation events, please visit www.PoetryFoundation.org.

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Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. One of the largest literary organizations in the world, it exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. In addition to launching a major new poetry Web site, the Foundation is sponsoring a national poetry recitation contest in the schools, and an unprecedented study to understand poetry's place in American culture.