About

Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in Birmingham. A committed performer, he has taken his poems from the upstairs room in an Eastbourne pub to the main stage of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris, from a bookshop in Beijing to an airfield in Germany, from niche podcasts to BBC Radio. He enjoys the creative chaos of big field festivals just as much as the composed concentration of literary events. Bohdan was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem: Performed in 2023, the category’s inaugural year.

Bohdan founded the first poetry slam in Poland before moving to the UK to get a doctorate in translation studies. He has worked as Director of Education on the Spoken Word in Education MA course at Goldsmiths University, and was the Midlands Producer for Apples and Snakes between 2010 and 2017. He is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. He also works as Creative Producer, and sits on the board of the Poetry Translation Centre.

More About Bohdan

Facilitator

Bohdan has considerable experience in teaching for all age groups and levels of experience, in formal and informal contexts, across genres and languages. He was Lead Tutor for the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the Bellows Poetry Collective, and he has worked as mentor or workshop leader for projects such as BBC 1xtra's Words First, Hull Gada, Alzheimer's Poetry Project, Beijing Poetry Project, and many others. He has devised and delivered many one-off bespoke workshops for participants of all ages, backgrounds, and interests.

Host

An experienced compere, Bohdan has hosted events and stages for organisations such as the RSC, Apples and Snakes, Latitude Festival, Verve Poetry Festival, Port Eliot Festival, and more. He has also run hosting workshops for Beatfreeks, Mouthy Poets, and others. 

Producer

Bohdan worked for 7 years as the Midlands Producer for Apples and Snakes. He started multiple projects while in post, ranging from event series to development projects (selected examples include Hit the Ode, Level UP, Lit Fuse, Wordsmiths & Co, Bright Smoke, Poets' Place, Shake the Dust, Public Address, etc. etc.) He also worked as General Manager and Creative Producer with Beatfreeks. - with work including moving open platforms from live to digital spaces, working cross-discipline on artistic commissions based on sociological research, devising innovative trust-based funding schemes, and more. 

Academic

Bohdan is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Before his appointment, he was a regular visiting Teaching Fellow at UoB’s Department of Film and Creative Writing, with duties ranging from teaching individual lectures to planning and delivering entire modules, as well as supervising dissertation work on BA and MA levels. He has held the post of Director of Education for the pioneering Spoken Word Education programme at Goldsmiths, as part of the MA in Creative Writing and Education in 2014-15. He worked as a Lecturer at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities before moving to the UK.
Bohdan holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Warwick, and his research interests include the politics of representation through literary translation, live poetry in translation, poetry co-creation in communities, authorship and identity in spoken word poetry, writing for games, and translation as creative practice.

Translator

Bohdan is an active translator and interpreter, working in Polish, French, and English. He has a particular interest in poetry translation, and has worked with numerous spoken word artists to adapt their texts for international audiences through subtitles and other means.