Charles Simic, the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States (2007-2008), was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1938, and immigrated to the United States in 1953, at the age of 15. He has lived in New York, Chicago, San Francisco area and for many years in New Hampshire where until his retirement he was a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. A poet, essayist and translator, he has been honored with the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize, two PEN Awards for his work as a translator, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 1967 Simic has published numerous collections of poems, among them, My Noiseless Entourage (2005); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems (2003; The World Doesn’t End:Prose Poems (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1990); Classic Ballroom Dances (1980), which won the University of Chicago’s Harriet Monroe Award and the Poetry Society of America’s di Castagnola Award. His latest book of poems, That Little Something, was released in the spring of 2008. Simic has also published a number of prose books: Memory Piano (2006), Metaphysician in the Dark (2003), A Fly in My Soup (2003), Orphan Factory (1998), The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs (1994), Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (1992), Wonderful Words, Silent Truth: Essays on Poetry and a Memoir (1990), as well as great many translations of poets from former Yugoslavia such as Ivan Lalic, Vasko Popa, Tomasz Salamun and Aleksandar Ristovic. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and the poetry editor of The Paris Review.
Charles Simic, the fifteenth Poet Laureate of the United States (2007-2008), was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1938, and immigrated to the United States in 1953, at the age of 15. He has lived in New York, Chicago, San Francisco area and for many years in New Hampshire where until his retirement he was a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. A poet, essayist and translator, he has been honored with the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize, two PEN Awards for his work as a translator, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 1967 Simic has published numerous collections of poems, among them, My Noiseless Entourage (2005); Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004), for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The Voice at 3:00 AM: Selected Late and New Poems (2003; The World Doesn’t End:Prose Poems (1990), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Selected Poems: 1963-1983 (1990); Classic Ballroom Dances (1980), which won the University of Chicago’s Harriet Monroe Award and the Poetry Society of America’s di Castagnola Award. His latest book of poems, That Little Something, was released in the spring of 2008. Simic has also published a number of prose books: Memory Piano (2006), Metaphysician in the Dark (2003), A Fly in My Soup (2003), Orphan Factory (1998), The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs (1994), Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell (1992), Wonderful Words, Silent Truth: Essays on Poetry and a Memoir (1990), as well as great many translations of poets from former Yugoslavia such as Ivan Lalic, Vasko Popa, Tomasz Salamun and Aleksandar Ristovic. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and the poetry editor of The Paris Review.