Boleslaw Taborski(1927-2010)
- Writer
- Actor
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.