His most recent book has been called a “work of genius,” a “stunning achievement,” and a “testament to the human spirit.” His long list of honors includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the Levinson Prize, and the Vilcek Prize. In his poems and translations, Ilya Kaminsky brilliantly wields language to create art, transport his readers, and question the world around us.
Kaminsky is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa, and coeditor and cotranslator of many other books. BBC named him one of “12 artists who changed the world in 2019.” He has bachelor’s and law degrees, and holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He previously worked for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center, and has done pro bono work as a special advocate for orphaned children in Southern California.
Born in Odessa, Kaminsky came to the United States at 16 after his father successfully applied for political asylum. Life had become too dangerous for Jews in the former Soviet city. Kaminsky, who lost most of his hearing by age four but did not get his first hearing aid until he was 16, explores the meaning of silence in his works. He started writing in English following his father’s death, a year after their move to the U.S.
“I fiercely resist being pigeonholed as a ‘Russian poet’ or an ‘immigrant poet’ or even an ‘American poet,’” he said in a Poets & Writers interview. “I am a human being. It is a marvelous thing to be.”
https://www.ilyakaminsky.com/
