This installment of Poetry & Play: Enjoy Godfrey Simmons, Jr. reading "Elegy of Fortinbras" by Zbigniew Herbert. Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish poet, playwright, and essayist. According to The Poetry Foundation, Herbert is recognized as one of the great Polish poets of the 20th century, and he gained an international reputation upon the publication of his works in English. His Selected Poems (1968) was translated into English by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. Other works translated into English include the poetry collections Mr. Cogito (1994), Report from the Besieged City (1985), and Elegy for the Departure and Other Poems (1999) as well as the essay collections The Barbarian in the Garden (1986), Still Life with a Bridle: Essays and Apocryphas (1993), and The King of the Ants (1999). Herbert was the recipient of numerous honors and awards during his lifetime, including the Koscielski Foundation Prize, the Lenau Prize, the Alfred Jurzykowski Prize, and the Herder Prize. Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. is the new artistic director of HartBeat Ensemble, Hartford’s Public Theatre. He is also co-founder of Civic Ensemble, a community-based theatre company in Ithaca, NY. For Civic, he directed Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Next Storm, and appeared in My Children! My Africa!, Fast Blood and his adaptation of Mike Daisey’s The Trump Card. Godfrey was producing artist in charge of New Artist Development for Off-Broadway’s Epic Theatre Ensemble, appearing in A More Perfect Union, Widowers' Houses (which Godfrey co-adapted with Ron Russell), and Measure for Measure, among other plays. At Epic, he also co-wrote and starred in a documentary play about the election of President Barack Obama, Dispatches From (A)mended America. Additional New York theatre credits include The Old Settler (Primary Stages), Betty’s Summer Vacation (Playwrights Horizons), Free Market (Working Theater), Leader of the People (New Georges), and microcrisis (Ensemble Studio Theater). Godfrey is a 2012 TCG/Fox Fellow, a participant in the TCG SPARK Leadership Program, and a lifetime member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.
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