Poet SEBASTIEN SMIROU, from Paris, and ANDREW ZAWACKI, poet and Smirou's translator, will discuss translation and read from Smirou's new collection My Lorenzo (Burning Deck, 2012), a meditation on the 15th-century Italian statesman, art patron and poet Lorenzo de Medici.

Sebastien Smirou is a French poet and author of seven books of poetry. His latest, Mon Laurent, appeared in 2003 from Editions P.O.L., the leading Parisian experimental poetry house. He has served as an editor of the journal Ligne, and has been honored with grants from the Centre National du Livre, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and from the Regional Counsil of Ile de France. Andrew Zawacki says of his work that it is "as concerned with physical arrangement and fractal symmetry as it is with high-voltage linguistic ambiguity and ruminations on matters philosophical, political, and sentimental." His third and latest volume was just reviewed by Le Monde, which claimed, "Nothing is more serious for Smirou than games." Smirou is a psychoanalyst, with a specialization in working with troubled children. He lives in Montrouge, on the outskirts of Paris.

Andrew Zawacki is the author of the poetry volumes Petals of Zero, Petals of One (Talisman House, 2009), Anabranch (Wesleyan, 2004), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia, 2002). His awards include the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. He has held fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, Le Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria, the University of Paris IV-La Sorbonne in France, the Slovenian Writers' Association in Slovenia, the Millay Colony, the Saltonstall Colony, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. With Brian Henry, he co-edits Verse. Zawacki is associate professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he directs the PhD program in creative writing.