In March, Wayne Miller’s latest poetry collection, The End of Childhood, was published in the US by Milkweed Editions. In July, Instytut Mikołowski in Poland published Koniec dzieciństwa i inne wiersze [The End of Childhood and Other Poems], which includes 43 poems selected from across Wayne’s six collections and translated into Polish by Piotr Florczyk, who teaches in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Program at the University of Washington. According to Instytut Mikołowski’s editors, Wayne is among the youngest American poets to have a poetry book translated into Polish.
On July 2, Wayne and Piotr traveled to Poland to read from Koniec dzieciństwa i inne wiersze at a book launch at Instytut Mikołowski (in the town of Mikołow, just outside Katowice) and in Kraków as featured readers at the Miłosz Festival, which honors Polish Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz. Piotr read from the book in Polish, and Wayne read the poems in English, followed by a Q and A. After the reading, Wayne and Piotr were interviewed for Polskie Radio. Other readers at the festival included Polish poets Krystyna Dąbrowska and Jerzy Jarniewicz, Scottish poet Penny Boxall, Latvian poet Jelena Glazova, Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson, Ukrainian poet Myroslav Laiuk, and English poet Joelle Taylor.
Photo credit: Adrianna Kochańska
