The Writers of Wales Database

CZERNIAWSKI, ADAM

Email: adam@czerniawski.co.uk
Website: http://www.czerniawski.co.uk/

Born in 1934 in Warsaw, Adam left Poland in 1941. Between 1941-7 he lived in the Middle East and arrived in England in 1947. He studied literature and philosophy at the Universities of London, Sussex and Oxford. A renowned Polish poet, prose-writer and translator of Polish literature and philosophy into English, his own literary essays have been widely published including in The Polish Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Wales, Encounter, The Irish Review, Bête Noire, Cogito, Comparative Criticism, Norwich Papers, Thumbscrew, PN Review, Metre, The Paris Review and The Shop.

Adam has translated nine works by Tadeusz Rózewicz, collections by Leon Stroinski, Leopold Staff, Wislawa Szymborska, Jan Kochanowski and Cyprian Kamil Norwid, and also various anthologies, dramas, philosophies and prose. He has also been involved in the translation of various source texts including Introduction to Modern Polish Literature (Krzyzanowski & Olszer, 1964), The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse (Harmondsworth, 1970), The Faber Book of Modern European Poetry (Faber, 1992) and Poetry of the Holocaust (HarperCollins,1995). Translations of his own poetry have appeared in periodicals and anthologies in Albania, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Romania and the USA. Adam currently lives in Monmouthshire. He is a Member of Academi.

Selected Publications:
The Burning Forest (Bloodaxe, 1987)
Scenes from a Disturbed Childhood (Serpent’s Tail, 1991)
Selected Poems (Routledge, 2000)
The Invention of Poetry: Selected Poems (Salt, 2005)
Firing the Canon: Essays Mainly on Poetry (Salt, 2010)

Contributed to:
Window: Collected Prose Poems (co-writer and translator) (Oasis Books, 1979)
Marriage Blanc and The Hunger Artist Departs by Tadeusz Rozewicz (translator) (Marion Boyars, 1983)
The Presence of Myth by Leszek Kolakowski (translator) (University of Chichago Press, 1989)
The Door by Tadeusz Rozewicz (translator) (Biblioteka, 1991)
They Came to See a Poet: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Rózewic (translator) (Anvil Press Poetry, 1991)
The Mature Laurel: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry (editor) (Dufour Editions, 1991)
The Trap by Tadeusz Rozewicz (translator) (Harwood Academic, 1996)
People on a Bridge: Poems by Wislawa Szymborska (editor and translator) (Forest Books, 1996)
Reading the Apocalypse in Bed: Selected Plays and Short Pieces by Tadeusz Rozewicz (co-translator) (Marion Boyars Publishers, 1998)
Logic and Time: An Essay on Husserl’s Theory of Meaning by Krzysztof Michalski (translator) (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002)
Selected Poems by Cyprian Kamil Norwid (translator) (Anvil Press Poetry, 2004)
Moved By The Spirit (editor) (Lapwing, forthcoming)