Joseph Brodsky

Brodsky was forced to leave the Soviet Union in 1972 after years of official pressure and a notorious trial for 'social parasitism' in the 1960s. He settled in the United States and later became a major Russian-American literary figure.

Brodsky received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987. The award recognized his poetry and essays, written across Russian and English literary worlds.

As a young poet in Leningrad, Brodsky was part of a circle that came under the influence of Anna Akhmatova. Akhmatova's moral authority and poetic example were important to his formation.

Brodsky's poetry is rooted mainly in Russian, but after moving to the United States he also wrote essays and some poems in English. He taught at American institutions including the University of Michigan and Mount Holyoke College.