Biography
Boleslaw Taborski was born in Torun, Poland. He was a poet, essayist, translator, writer on theatre, and former visiting professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He spent the years of the World War Two German occupation of Poland in Krakow and Warsaw, and from 1943 was a soldier of the Polish Home Army. He fought and was wounded in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, in the "Baszta" regiment. After being liberated from a Prisoner of War camp, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he lived from 1946. He studied English and drama at Bristol University. In 1959 - 1993 Taborski was a radio journalist at the Polish Section of the BBC World Service in London, where he wrote and broadcast a radio novel, news, cultural reviews and special occasion programmes, and for many years produced a programme dedicated to culture and the arts. He was author of two dozen collections of poetry, spanning the period 1957-2010, including the English language volume "For the Witnesses" (1978). He wrote a number of books on theatre, including "Nowy Teatr Elzbietanski" (1967), "Byron and the Theatre" (1972), and two books on Karol Wojtyla as poet and playwright: "Karola Wojtyly dramaturgia wnetrza" (1989) and "Wprost w moje serce uderza droga wszystkich" (2005), as well as an award-winning book on the Warsaw Uprising - "Moje powstanie wtedy i teraz" (1998). He won a number of prestigious literary awards in Warsaw, New York, Geneva and London. These included the Jurzykowski Award (1968), the Koscielski Award (1977), the Witkiewicz Award (1988), the ZAIKS Award (1990, 1995), The Association of European Culture Award (1998), The Historical Book Publihsers' "Klio" Award (1998). Taborski translated into English the dramatic works of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), three books by Jan Kott (including the renowned "Shakespeare Our Contemporary"), and "The Life of Mayakovsky" by Wiktor Woroszylski. Into Polish he translated twenty plays by Harold Pinter, a Graham Greene novel and collections of poetry by Robert Graves and Robert Lowell. He was a member of the Polish Writers' Association and PEN.
