A selection of poems by the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004) in the velvet series, compiled by Ingmāra Balode, edited by Jānis Elsbergs, the artist of the series – Anna Aizsilniece.
Polish poet Czesław Miłosz was born on June 30, 1911 in Šeteņi, present-day Lithuania, lived in Vilnius, Warsaw, Washington, Paris, Berkeley, and died in Krakow on August 14, 2004. By mentioning the most important "cities of Miłosz", in a place where a dash is usually placed between the years, I try to record the life of this poet in spatial categories in one sentence. Both - time and space - twisted, abstracted and brought to the touch are essential in the works of Czesław Miłosz: in poetry, prose and essays.
Ingmāra Balode.
Czesław Miłosz' poetic legacy is enormous, with the first of his 18 collections of poems being published in Poland in 1933 and the last written in 2003. Until now, Miłosz' poetry has been available in Latvia mainly in the larger and smaller publications in cultural media and joint editions translated by Uldis Bērziņš, Māris Salējs, Hermanis Marģers Majevskis, as well as in a selection translated and created by Dagnija Dreika.
Czesław Miłosz is one of the greatest and world-famous Polish poets of the twentieth century. In 1980, Miłosz received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His collection of essays “Captured Mind” (1953; Latvian translation by Uldis Bērziņš, 1998) is an irreplaceable value in the understanding of the essence and consequences of totalitarianism and also a work of art.
Ingmāra Balode (1981) is a Latvian poet and translator. She received the
Silver Badge of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2018) for her merits in translating Polish literature. Balode's last collection "Poems after our Era" was published by Neputns in 2021.