In March, English and Creative Writing Professor Wayne Miller published his sixth full-length poetry collection, titled The End of Childhood, with US independent literary press Milkweed Editions.
In July, a selection of poems from across Miller’s six books was translated into Polish and published in Poland by Instytut Mikołowski publishing house. The book is titled Koniec dzieciństwa i inne wiersze [The End of Childhood and Other Poems]. According to editors Maciej Melecki and Krzysztof Siwczyk, Miller is among the youngest American poets to have a poetry collection published in Poland.
The translation project began in 2024 when Piotr Florczyk—a poet and translator from Poland who teaches in the Slavic Languages and Literatures program at the University of Washington—reached out to Miller to ask about translating his work. Florczyk selected 43 poems for translation and decided the order in which they should be presented. As he fine-tuned the Polish versions of the poems, he consulted with Miller, as well as with Polish poets Rafał Gawin, Jacek Gutor, and Jakub Kornhauser.
In early July, Miller and Florczyk 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, the largest literary festival in Central Europe. Florczyk read from the book in Polish, and Miller read the poems in English, followed by a Q and A. After the reading, Miller and Florcyk were interviewed by Polskie Radio; they then read in the Miłosz Festival’s “Republic of Poetry” event, in which multiple poets read in multiple languages as a kind of literary and cultural exchange. 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.
While Miller was in Europe, he also read from The End of Childhood at the Belfast Book Festival in Northern Ireland.
Miller came to CU Denver in 2014 and serves as editor of CU Denver’s national literary magazine Copper Nickel, which he co-edits with his Creative Writing colleagues and numerous student editors and interns.