Czeslaw Milosz Award

Czeslaw Milosz Award. On Wednesday, Adam Zagajewski will be awarded with this prize for building up agreements and understanding between Americans and Poles.
- America is a part of my life - said Adam Zagajewski, one of the most famous Polish poets, and essayist. First time he visited the US in 1981. Then, staying in exile in Paris, he has repeatedly been invited to poetry evenings and seminars, he has also met Czeslaw Milosz and outstanding American poets.
Adam Zagajewski has stayed four months every year at the University of Houston, giving lectures about creative writing (art of writing).
Zagajewski has been a professor at the prestigious University of Chicago for one year, where he comes for one semester to give seminars about literature. In the United States he is considered one of the most famous Polish poets, but he is also highly valued for the independence judgments, and for the protection of fundamental human rights during communism times and now. He befriended the forefront of American writers and intellectuals. His "Try to Exalt the Injured World" (Spróbuj opiewać okaleczony świat), which The New Yorker printed after the attack on September 11, 2001, had a far-reaching repercussions.
To express appreciation for the Polish poet he was awarded in 2004 with the International Literary Neustadt Prize, by the University of Oklahoma and quarterly "World Literature Today." Before, this prestigious award known as small Nobel Prize, was given to only one Pole: Czeslaw Milosz. During the ceremony, it was stressed that Adam Zagajewski is a "real XXI century poet, a realist, whose intention is to transform the pain of modern life into beauty."