We are delighted to announce the Heaney-Miłosz Residency, a brand new partnership with the Irish Embassy in Poland and Kraków Festival Office, giving a writer the opportunity to spend time in Kraków, in the Czesław Miłosz apartment
Over the past 18 months, the Estate of Seamus Heaney has worked closely with the Irish Embassy in Warsaw and the Krakow Festival Office to put together an exciting new residency programme, which honours the close friendship between Seamus Heaney and his poetic mentor, the Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. It also celebrates SH’s enduring relationship with the city of Kraków, which he visited many times, receiving an honorary doctorate from the prestigious Jagiellonian University in 2005. Speaking of it, he said, “it was in Krakow that I got my first sense of the intensity and camaraderie of the poetry scene… The mixture of close-knit friendships and commitment to poetry reminded me very much of Belfast in the 1960s.”
The Heaney-Milosz Residency - which officially launched earlier this month - will give an emerging or mid-career writer resident on the island of Ireland the chance to spend 4-6 weeks in Krakow, living in the former apartment where Czeslaw Milosz. It will provide them with the time and space to focus on their own writing, while engaging with the city’s rich literary life and heritage through events and meetings with the local writing community. Like Dublin, Krakow is a UNESCO City of Literature, and home to publishing house Znak, which published both Milosz and Heaney, and major international literary festivals.
Applications are now being accepted for the residency, with a final deadline of Friday 30th September. The first residency will take place in Autumn 2023, and the residency will then run biennially.
All details - including dates, application forms and process, eligibility criteria, evaluation - are now available via KBF’s website - click here. http://literaryresidenciespoland.pl/en/rezydencje/heaney-milosz-residency-in-krakow-poland/
We look forward to hearing from you!