Milosz and the Future: A Centenary Festival in Honor of Czeslaw Milosz
Three-day Event Oct. 19-21 Will Bring Notable Writers
To Claremont McKenna to Celebrate Poland's Iconic Poet

Claremont McKenna College and the Family of Benjamin Z. Gould for Humanistic Studies will celebrate one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, during a special, three-day event on campus, Oct. 19-21: Milosz and the Future: A Centenary Festival in Honor of Czeslaw Milosz.
Poets, translators and writers will gather to discuss Milosz's impact in the United States, of which he was a citizen for decades, and in Poland, his native realm and mother tongue. Polish and American poets and lovers of poetry alike will read the Milosz pieces that touched them most deeply, and whatfrom their own workhis writing inspired. Writers in exile, people living under conditions hostile to creative expression, translators, and poets, all those struggling to find connections between disparate places, will speak about the particular bridgesto another language, to inner freedom, to their own heartsthat the Polish poet's words built for them.
"This should be a very exciting event. It is not an academic conference. It is an open discussion and celebration among writers about the meaning and impact of another writer's work on their own," says festival organizer Robert Faggen, the Barton Evans & H. Andrea Neves Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna and director of the Gould Center at CMC. "It's also an occasion to bring the public and poetry together."
This is not the first time there has been an assembly of notable poets and writers to celebrate the Nobel Laureate on CMC's campus. The first International Milosz Festival was held at the College in 1998 and was attended in its entirety by Milosz himself. Here to discuss and celebrate the writer were the familiar names of Seamus Heaney and Adam Michnik, poets Edward Hirsch and Adam Zagajewski, as well as Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, and Leonard Nathan, who spoke at the festival about the importance of Milosz for contemporary American poetry and world culture.
According to Irena Grudzinska Gross' book, Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets (Yale University Press, 2009), Milosz himself called the 1998 Claremont Festival "the feast of friendship, the importance of which for the collaboration of American and European poets I fully appreciate."
And in connection with the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC, Faggen has recently founded the nonprofit Milosz Institute at the College, which has already encouraged and benefitted the study of Milosz and Polish culture among Claremont McKenna students.
Faggen, who was awarded a prestigious 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and is on sabbatical this academic year to complete a biography of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Kenneth "Ken" Kesey, has orchestrated the Milosz Centenary from his office in Los Angeles. He has also crossed the globe to speak about the Polish, iconic poet. Two years ago in 2009, he spoke about the contemporary significance of Milosz' classic work on totalitarianism, The Captive Mind, during an event in Krakow celebrating Milosz on the fifth anniversary of his death. This year he has given presentations on Milosz at Centenary events in Krakow, Vilnius, and Paris.
But for this month's celebration at Claremont McKenna, the artists arriving for the Centenary are a special mix when it comes to Milosz's work. Care was taken, Faggen says, to draw up a decidedly younger group of accomplished (and in numerous cases, award-winning) writers, scholars, and translators to interact with the more seasoned event veterans, including Milosz's son Anthony. Participants will read from Milosz's work, their own work, and will engage in open discussion of the poet's ongoing impact in both Poland and the United States.
The list of participants includes:

Jacek Dehnel, author, poet, and translator
Robert Faggen, author, editor and critic
Piotr Florcek, poet and translator
Jacek Gutorow, poet, literary critic, and translator
Azar Nafisi, author (Reading Lolita in Tehran), professor and contributing writer (The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal)
W.S. Merwin, U.S. Poet Laureate, two Pulitzer Prizes
Adam Michnik, historian, political activist, and Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief
Anthony Milosz, composer, translator, hardware and software designer, and son of Czeslaw Milosz
Meghan O'Rourke, poet, author, editor (The New Yorker, Slate, The Paris Review)
Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate
Claudia Rankine, poet and author
Mira Rosenthal, poet and translator
Tomasz Rozycki, poet and translator
Peter Dale Scott, poet and translator
Dariusz Sosnicki, poet and editor of Polish contemporary fiction
Joanna Trzeciak, writer and translator
Lillian Vallee, poet and translator
C.K. Williams, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

Seating for the three-day Centenary is limited. To make reservations for any of the readings and/or meals planned Wednesday through Friday, visit the event registration page.
The Centenary kicks off at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 19 with a free registration check-in, followed by a 5:30 p.m. welcome dinner, reading, and discussion with U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin in the College's Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum.
The Milosz celebration then resumes at the Athenaeum at 10 a.m. Thursday, with festival participants and audience members discussing Milosz in the United States and Polanda look at the poet's influence here and abroad. An optional lunch follows at noon in Collins Dining Hall (advance registration is required), before guests gather again for The Art & Politics of Translating Milosz, a discussion and readings with Peter Dale Scott and Lillian Vallee at 1 p.m. Other scheduled events include:

3 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 20: Readings by Polish and American Poets

5:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 20: Dinner with Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

10 a.m., Friday, Oct. 21: Milosz and Modern Poetry (discussion between and among festival participants and the audience)

11:30 a.m., Friday, Oct. 21: Milosz Optional Lunch at Collins Dining Hall

1:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 21: Readings by Polish and American Poets

3 p.m., Friday, Oct. 21: Milosz: Man Among Scorpions (Adam Michnik discusses Miloszthe man and the poet)

5:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 21: Festival Closing Dinner and Reading (Robert Pinksy, C.K. Williams, and Anthony Milosz discuss the life and works of Czeslaw Milosz.)

View this schedule, make reservations and/or access the biographies and photos of all of the participating speakers for the three-day Centenary at Claremont McKenna.

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