Prominent Polish poet and essayist Adam Zagajewski is the recipient of the European Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually by the Cassamarca Foundation in Treviso, northern Italy.

Zagajewski was selected by a fifty-strong international jury. The presentation ceremony is scheduled for Friday. Founded in 1913, the Cassamarca Foundation deals with the promotion of academic research, culture and the arts, education and health

Born in 1945, Adam Zagajewski was a political dissident in the 1970s. In 1981 he made his first visit to the United States and in later years, while living in Paris, he was frequently invited to the United States to literary seminars and meetings with American poets.

In 1988, he started teaching at the University of Houston. In 2002, he returned to Krakow and two years ago took up teaching at the University of Chicago.

Zagajewski’s poem Try to praise the mutilated world published in The New Yorker magazine's memorial edition for 11 September 2001 enhanced his reputation. In recent years, his name was mentioned among the candidates for the Nobel Prize for literature. (mk)