Tone Škrjanec & Milosz Biedrzycki

POETRY FROM POLAND AND SLOVENIA:
A book launch for 69 by MLB (Milosz Biedrzycki) and a reading by Milosz Biedrzycki and Tone Škrjanec.

Polish poet MLB (Milosz Biedrzycki) was born in Koper, Slovenia, in 1967, graduated with a degree in Geophysics from Kraków’s Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, and has worked for many years as a geophysical engineer in the Middle East. He debuted in the early 1990s on the literary scene around the magazine bruLion (known for being the venue of the so-called “O’Harists”) and has published seven books of poetry in Polish. English translations of his work have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Trafika, Chicago Review, Fence, Zoland Poetry, and the Zephyr Press anthology Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird. He is a 2010 fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and lives in Kraków. This reading will be a celebration of the release of 69, the first collection of MLB’s poetry in English, translated by Frank L. Vigoda and published by Zephyr Press.

Slovenian poet Tone Škrjanec was born in Ljubljana in 1953 and graduated in sociology from the University of Ljubljana. He worked as a teacher and journalist before becoming program and poetry events co-ordinator at the prestigious France Prešeren Cultural Centre in Ljubljana in 1990. Apart from writing poetry, Škrjanec also translates poems and novels from English, Croatian and Serbian (Goran I. Jankovi?, Tatjana Groma?a, and Delimir Rešicki for example), reserving special attention for modern American literature (Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Gary Snyder, Frank O’Hara, and Timothy Liu). His poetry chapbook Sun on a Knee, translated into English by Joshua Beckman, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2006, with a second edition in 2008, and a new edition coming out especially for this event. A special-edition chapbook, I’ll Calm the Horses (translated by Ana Pepelnik and produced by UDP) will also be available at the event. Tone is currently a resident at the Slovenian Ministry of Culture studio in Brooklyn.

Presented by Ugly Duckling Presse and Zephyr Press, in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia