2011 Milosz Year

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of poet, translator, and prose writer Czeslaw Milosz and the Polish Book Institute is celebrating 2011 as Czeslaw Milosz Year:

Our hope is that the hundred-year anniversary of Czeslaw Milosz’s birth will be a chance to reacquaint ourselves with his work, which has long prompted creative reflection on the condition of the contemporary world.

The Milosz Year program is made up of new book publications, conferences, discussions, and exhibitions devoted to the poet, organized in Poland and abroad – from Krasnojarsk through Vilnius, Krasnogruda, Krakow, and Paris, to New York and San Francisco. Its culminating point will be the second edition of the Milosz Festival, taking place in Krakow (May 9th-15th 2011).

Jacek Podsiadło

Absinthe 10 included a poem by Jacek Podsiadło and at the web site for the Polish Book Institute there is a brief mention of his new book of fiction.

An excerpt:

Podsiadło is interested in all paths—the well-trodden, like the Road to Slovakia, to Egon Bondy, and the unfamiliar, explored for the first time. Of these routes, as noted in the book, there are hundreds, and the equally intriguing guide-narrator makes even getting lost on them into an adventure. The whole thing is a journey that has never taken place in Polish literature before.