Piotr Gwiazda
- Professor
Piotr's Affiliations: Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, European Studies Center, Global Studies Center
Piotr Gwiazda is the author of two critical studies, US Poetry in the Age of Empire, 1979-2012 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and James Merrill and W.H. Auden: Homosexuality and Poetic Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has published three volumes of poetry, Aspects of Strangers (Moria Books, 2015), Messages (Pond Road Press, 2012), and Gagarin Street (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2005). He has also translated three books by the Polish writer Grzegorz Wróblewski, Dear Beloved Humans: Selected Poems (Diálogos Books, 2023), Zero Visibility (Phoneme Media/Deep Vellum, 2017) and Kopenhaga (Zephyr Press, 2013). His essays, reviews, poems, and translations appear in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Asymptote, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Granta, Jacket2, Lana Turner, The Nation, The Seattle Review, and the TLS.
Courses Taught
Undergraduate:
American Literature
The Dramatic Imagination
Reading Poetry
Words and Images
Docupoetry
Experiments in Translation (Topics in Creative Writing)
Emily Dickinson (Project Seminar)
The Waste Land and Its Contexts (Project Seminar)
Peace Writing/Writing Peace (Senior Seminar)
Graduate:
Readings in Contemporary Poetry
Translation and World Literature
Genres and Genre Theory
Education & Training
- Ph.D., English and American Literature, New York University (2001)
- B.A., English, Southern Connecticut State University (1996)
Representative Publications
“Theory File,” “Bilingual Feelings,” in Forms of Migration: Global Perspectives on Im/migrant Art and Literature, ed. Stefan Maneval and Jennifer A. Reimer (Falschrum Books, 2022), 4-5 and 156-159.
“Innate Propensity.” Review of How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Authors by Wisława Szymborska, Times Literary Supplement No. 6200 (January 28, 2022): 24.
“Ghosts and Anchors: Translingualism in Contemporary U.S. Poetry.” Criticism 63.3 (Spring 2021).
“A Translational Poetics?” Forum on 21st Century American Poetics. Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion 13 (2021).
“Grzegorz Wróblewski’s Kopenhaga and the Process of Inscription.” In The Edinburgh Companion to the Prose Poem, ed. Mary Ann Caws and Michel Delville (University of Edinburgh Press, 2021).
“The Forest of Language: Etymological Play in Leonard Schwartz’s The New Babel.” Talisman 48 (2020).
“‘The Dead Will Think the Living Are Worth It’: Rereading W.S. Merwin’s The Lice.” American Poetry Review (July/August 2019).
Research Interests
Poetry and poetics, American literature, intertextuality studies, peace studies, poetry and pedagogy, reader response theory, creative writing, literary translation
Research Grants
Small Grant for Research & Travel, European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh, 2018, 2019, 2024
Faculty Collaborative Research Grant, Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh, 2013
PEN American Center Grant, Translation Fund, 2010
Mellon Fellowship, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 2004