Tadeusz Rózewicz

Tadeusz Różewicz - poet, playwright, and novelist, was one of Poland's most versatile and pre-eminent modern writers. Remarkable for his simultaneous mastery of poetry, prose, and drama, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Tadeusz Różewicz has been translated into over forty languages. The most recent English-language volumes, recycling (2001), New Poems (2007) and Sobbing Superpower (2011), were finalists for the 2003 Popescu Prize (UK), the 2008 National Book Critics Award (USA) and the 2012 Griffin Prize (Canada) respectively. In 2007 he was awarded the European Prize for Literature.Mother Departs (Matka odchodzi, 1999), exploring the life of his mother Stefania, is perhaps his most personal work. It won the Nike Prize in 2000, Poland’s most prestigious literary award. He lived in the city of Wrocław, Poland.Różewicz studied art history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, but he has been associated with Silesia since the late 1940s and lived in Wrocław for thirty years. His work has been translated into many languages including English (his work is championed in the UK by the poet and critic, Tom Paulin, and the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney), French, German, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish and he has received Polish state prizes and foreign awards. He is well-known in many countries as an excellent poet of the highest moral authority. Różewicz is a precursor of the avant-garde in poetry and drama, an innovator firmly rooted in the unceasing re-creation of the Romantic tradition, though always with a teasing ironic distance. He is a grand solitary, convinced of an artistic mission that he regards as a state of internal concentration, alertness, and ethical sensitivity.