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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Charles Simic

Charles Simic

2011 Vilcek Prize in Literature

Title

Emeritus Professor of English and Creative Writing, and Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at the University of New Hampshire

Area(s) of Research

Poetry; English literature; creative writing

Education

New York University (BA, Russian)

Country of Birth

Serbia

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editor essayist guggenheim fellowship literature macarthur fellowship poet poet laureate pulitzer prize serbia
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A photo of Charles Simic wearing a dress shirt and jacket at night outdoors.
Photo courtesy of City Arts Magazine

Charles Simic’s poetry has been called “strikingly original,” “grimly realistic,” “metaphysical,” “ironically humorous,” “meditative,” and, most often, “surreal.” He began writing poetry while in high school, and always in English, which he had learned to speak at 15, after leaving Belgrade and arriving in the States, by way of Paris. Just five years later, in 1959, he had published his first poems in an issue of the Chicago Review. His college education was hard won, at night, paid for by the various odd jobs he took during the day, first in Chicago and later in New York City, and interrupted by a two-year stint in the military.

He completed his bachelor’s degree in Russian, in 1966, from New York University, but the influences and inspirations for his poems were already well established: his childhood experiences, his passion for art, poetry, jazz, and film, and his keen eye for observation. Within a year after graduation, his first collection, What the Grass Says, was published.

Simic has kept up an astounding pace in the ensuing years. Among his 20 books of poetry include The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems (1990), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Walking the Black Cat (1996), a National Book Award finalist; Jackstraws (1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Selected Poems: 1963–2003 (2004), which won the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize. He has been equally productive as a translator, editor, and essayist.

Simic remains active as a teacher, and since 1973 has taught English and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire, where he is today Emeritus Professor; and as a Distinguished Poet-in-Residence, he teaches every fall semester at New York University.

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Robert Frost Medal (2011)
  • Wallace Stevens Award (2007)
  • Poet Laureate of the United States (2007)
  • International Griffin Poetry Prize (2005)
  • Fellow, Guggenheim
  • Fellow, MacArthur Foundation
  • Fellow, National Endowment for the Arts
  • New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1999)
  • Pulitzer Prize (1990)
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editor essayist guggenheim fellowship literature macarthur fellowship poet poet laureate pulitzer prize serbia

Jury Members

2011 Vilcek Prize in Literature

Lan Samantha Chang

Director, The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop

Deborah Landau

Director, New York University Creative Writing Program

Eileen Pollack

Zell Director, The University of Michigan MFA Program in Creative Writing

Francine Prose

Distinguished Visiting Writer, Bard College

Ilan Stavans

Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College

Deborah Treisman

Fiction Editor, The New Yorker
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