Charles Simic

He speaks fluent English, French, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenian.

Dušan "Charles" Simić was born on May 9, 1938 in Belgrade in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As a small child, he was swept up by the tides of war and his family was nearly killed by bombs on several occasions. When he was 4 years old, his father emigrated to Italy in order to seek employment. It would be 10 years before they would see him again.

When Charles was 15, his mother managed to get the family to Paris, France. When he turned 16, his family emigrated to the United States where he began studying poetry while enrolled in ‘Oak Park High School’ in Chicago.

In 1958, Simic left Chicago and relocated to New York City. At night he would study but during the day he had a wide variety of menial and low-paying jobs.

In 1959, he had one of his poems published in the 'Chicago Review'. The next year, he enrolled in the ‘University of Chicago’.

In 1961, he was drafted into the American military. He was obliged to serve for two years during the build-up in Vietnam. He worked as a rule enforcer during one tour in Germany and one in France.

In 1966, Simic graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He immediately began writing poems, first in his native language, and then gradually in English.

He also began translating poems written by fellow Serbian and Yugoslav writers. He began work as an assistant to the editor of a small photography magazine entitled 'Aperture' in the same year.

Charles served as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress of the United States of America in 2007. His works, like ‘The World Doesn’t End’ and 'Somewhere among Us a Stone is Taking Notes', consisted of puns and pranks and are notable for their uniqueness.