The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987
Awarded on: 1987-10-22
"for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
Joseph Brodsky
Born: 1940-05-24 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia)
Gender: male
Field: Russian poet (1940–1996)
Biography
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.