Charles Simic, the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States (2007-2008), will open the New York University Creative Writing Program Fall 2009 Reading Series with a reading from his works and a conversation with Alice Quinn, executive director of the Poetry Society of America and former poetry editor of The New Yorker. This event, “The New Salon: Poets in Conversation,” takes place on Thursday, September 10, at 7 p.m., in NYU’s Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 W. 10th Street, and is free and open to the public. For further information, the public may call 212.998.8816 or visit www.cwp.fas.nyu.edu. The event is co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America.
Simic, who is a Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at NYU, has most recently published TheRenegade: Writings on Poetry and a Few Other Things (George Braziller, Inc, 2009). His numerous collections of poetry include That Little Something, My Noiseless Entourage, Selected Poems: 1963-2003, for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize, The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Classic Ballroom Dances, which won the Harriet Monroe Award and the Poetry Society of America’s di Castagnola Award.
Simic, who is also a MacArthur Fellow, has authored a number of prose books including Memory Piano, Metaphysician in the Dark, A Fly in My Soup, and Orphan Factory. He has published many translations of poets from the former Yugoslavia, where he was born, including Ivan Lalic, Vasko Popa, Tomaz Salamun, and Aleksandar