“Zagajewski’s urging is the more compelling precisely because it is not heard, but overheard; we follow his example not because he demands it, but because his own struggle so fully engages our sympathies.”—Clare Cavanaugh, “Lyric and Public: The Case of Adam Zagajewski” (WLT Vol. 79, May 2005)
Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was born in the city of Lwów (now Lvov, Ukraine) but was forced to leave almost immediately thereafter when the Red Army occupied the area. After studying philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Zagajewski emigrated to Paris, where he would remain until 2002. He began writing poetry in the 1970s and helped lead the movement that would come to be known as the Polish New Wave. He built his career around teaching at various universities throughout the world, including the University of Houston and the University of Chicago in the United States. Much of Zagajewski’s body of work has been translated into English, including the poetry collections Tremor (1985), Canvas (1991), Mysticism for Beginners (1997), World Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002), A Defense of Ardor (2004), Eternal Enemies (2008), Unseen Hand (2011), Slight Exaggeration (2017), and Asymmetry (2018). He also wrote a memoir, published in 2000, entitled Another Beauty. In addition to his Neustadt honor, Zagajewski was also named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1992.
“Awarding the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature to Adam Zagajewski, the most gifted poetic heir of Miłosz, is like passing on a baton, providing reassurance that Polish poetry is alive and doing well.”—Bogdana Carpenter, nominating author, in her tribute to Zagajewski (WLT 79, May 2005)
2004 Neustadt Jurors and Candidates |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JURORS | FINALISTS | |||
| Esther Allen (United States) | Duong Thu Huong (Vietnam) | |||
| Bogdana Carpenter (Poland/United States) | Adam Zagajewski (Poland) | |||
| Bei Dao (China) in absentia | Gary Snyder (United States) | |||
| Kristjana Gunnars (Iceland) | J. M. Coetzee (South Africa) | |||
| Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania) | J. M. Coetzee (South Africa) | |||
| Gabriel Okara (Nigeria) | Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) | |||
| Edmundo Paz-Soldán (Bolivia) | Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) | |||
| Leon Rooke (Canada) | José Saramago (Portugal) | |||
| Bapsi Sidhwa (Pakistan) | Marjorie Agosín (Chile) | |||
“We understand that the ongoing war between imagination and time (alas, a war that will never be won) cannot end, that we cannot turn, all of us, into historians of poetry and content ourselves with reading old poets. Poetry must be written, continued, risked, tried, revised, erased, and tried again as long as we breathe and love, doubt and believe.”
—Adam Zagajewski (Poland), 2004 Neustadt Laureate
