was born 17 January 1947 in Borzęcin; he is a Polish poet, journalist, reporter, and the author of diaries and essays.

Baran graduated in Polish literature from the Pedagogical University in Krakow. He worked as a reporter for Wieści weekly, and then for Dziennik Polski, where he ran the Wierszowisko [Poetryscape] column, a kind of literary mailbox. He published his first works in 1968 in Tygodnik Kulturalny. His debut volume of poems, titled Our Frankest Conversations, was released in 1974 through Wydawnictwo Literackie. After that he published in Tygodnik Powszechny, Kultura, Poezja, Literatura, Twórczość, New York’s Przegląd Polski, Rzeczpospolita Kulturalna, Wyspa, Sycyna, Migotanie, Topos, and Kraków monthly. Józef Baran’s poetry has also appeared in foreign anthologies, in Czechia, Israel, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the United States. His individual works have been translated into twenty different languages, including English, German, Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, and all the Slavic languages. In 2000, Józef Baran took part in a meeting of three Polish poets (Baran, Żurakowski, Lebioda) and three American poets (Kunitz, Stern, Taylor) at the United Nations Building in New York. In October 2001 he represented Polish poetry at the 21^st World Congress of Poets in Sydney, featuring around 150 authors from Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Spain, India, Ireland, Israel, Canada, Korea, Poland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the USA. In 2010 he went on a tour of Brazil’s universities, where he read Portuguese and Spanish translations of his essays and poems. In 1991 he won a Svenska Institutet in Stockholm scholarship, and a year later, a scholarship to travel to Sweden from the Foundation for the Promotion of Independent Polish Scholarship and Culture in Paris. On two occasions he also won scholarships from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2007, 2012). Józef Baran has received many awards and distinctions, including: The Andrzej Bursa award (for Our Frankest Conversations, 1975), The Stanisław Piętak Award (for As Long as It Still, 1977), The Kościelski Foundation in Geneva Award (for In a Flash, 1980), The Literature Foundation Award (for Sprouts and Bonds, 1984), The Małopolska Voivodeship Award (for lifetime achievement, 1992), a Pen West Club distinction in Los Angeles (for the bilingual edition of W błysku zapałki / In a Flash, 2001), The Krakow Book of the Month Award (for The House with Open Walls, 2001), The Władysław Orkan Award (2002), and The City of Krakow Award (for lifetime achievement, 2004). In 2016 he was nominated for the K. I. Gałczyński Orpheus Award for Happiness in an Invisibility Cap and 99 New Poems.

In the wide swath of themes found in Józef Baran’s poetry, pride of place go to: nature, man, love, and the passing of time. This is empathetic poetry, a poetry of open spaces, of reflecting on the natural order of the world and the changing of the seasons. His hometown of Borzęcin occupies an important place, being the place from which his axiological system was gradually came to include – along with the knowledge and experience he acquired – elements of belonging to the cultural universe. Józef Baran remains a fully independent poet, never having succumbed to fashion, consciously dabbling in intertextual games, alluding to masterpieces of Polish and world literature, and to works of music and painting.

Articles on the poet’s work have been written by Artur Sandauer, Jerzy Kwiatkowski, Janusz Drzewucki, Stanisław Stabro, Bolesław Faron, Julian Kornhauser, Elżbieta Mikoś, and Marek Karwala. Since 1989, Baran’s poems have been taught in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. They have also been the subject of MA theses and secondary school papers.

Józef Baran has been a member of the Polish Writers’ Association for many years, serving as vice-chair of the Krakow Branch for two terms (1998-2002). His poems have inspired many songwriters and composers, including Stare Dobre Małżeństwo, Grupa pod Budą, Elżbieta Adamiak, Hanna Banaszak, Krzysztof Myszkowski, Mirosław Czyżykiewicz, Ola Mauer, Jakub Pawlak, Beata Paluch, and Andrzej Zarycki. The important films on his work include the television programs Art – Eternity – The Home by Piotr Słowikowski, featuring Anna Dymna and Jerzy Trela (TVP 2, TV Polonia – 1998), and the documentary The Poet Writes, made in 2017 by Krakow Library in cooperation with TVP 3, directed and scripted by Maria Guza. Józef Baran’s hometown of Borzęcin has organized a poetry recital competition under his name since 2002, during which schoolchildren and young people present his poems. In 2013 Józef Baran’s manuscripts were passed on to the National Library collections. In 2015 he received the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis.

BOOK-LENGTH PUBLICATIONS

• Nasze najszczersze rozmowy: poetry – Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1974  
• Dopóki jeszcze: poetry.– Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1976   
• Na tyłach świata: poetry – Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1977
• W błysku zapałki: poetry – Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1979 
• Wiersze wybrane – Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1984
• Pędy i pęta: poetry – Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984
• Autor! Autor!: conversations with writers and painters – Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1986
• Skarga: poetry – Szczecin: „Glob”, 1988
• Czułość: poetry – Krakow: „Miniatura”, 1988, 1989
• Wiersze wybrane – Krakow: „Miniatura”, 1990
• Śnił mi się Artur Sandauer: conversations and memoirs – Krakow: Centrum Kultury Żydowskiej na Kazimierzu: Hereditas Polono – Judaica, 1992
• Pacierz Szwejka: poetry – Krakow: "Miniatura", 1992
• Mała kosmogonia: poetry – Krakow: "Miniatura", 1994
• 115 wierszy (poems from 1985-1993). – Tarnów: "Comdruk", 1994
• Zielnik miłosny: poetry – Krakow: Jawor: Oficyna Konfraterni Poetów, 1995
• Zielnik miłosny: poetry (2^nd ed.) – Krakow: Jawor: Oficyna Konfraterni Poetów: Kraków, 1996
• La Confession / trans. Jerzy Gregorek – Chattanooga: Tennessee: The Poetry Miscelany, 1997
• Pochwała zbawienia / trans. Andriej Bazilewskij – Moscow: Wahazar, 1997   
• Majowe zaklęcie: poetry  – Krakow: Wydawnictwo Baran i Suszczyński, 1997
• Epifania słoneczna: poetry – Poznań: Arka, 1998  
• Wiersze wybrane – Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1998  
• Pod zielonym drzewem życia: poetry – Krakow: seria Poeci Krakowa, Śródmiejski Ośrodek Kultury, 2000
• Dolina ludzi spokojnych: poetry (photographs – Jakub Ciećkiewicz). – Tarnów: „Biblos”, 2001
• Dom z otwartymi ścianami: poetry  – Warsaw: Nowy Świat, 2001 
• Najdłuższa podróż: poetry – Warsaw: Nowy świat, 2002
• Spotkanie – Begegnung: poetry – Krakow: Oficyna Konfraterni Poetów, 2003 (German translation: Henryk Bereska)
• A wody płyną i płyną: poetry – Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2004
• Koncert dla nosorożca – dziennik poety z przełomu wieków: prose/memoirs – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2005
• Zielnik miłosny i inne liryki: poetry – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2005
• Hymn poranny: poetry – London, London Publishing Br@ndBook, 2006
• Tragarze wyobraźni: prose/memoirs – Rzeszów: Podkarpacki Instytut Książki i Marketingu, 2006
• Taniec z ziemią: poetry – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2006
• Rondo. Wiersze z lat 2006-2009: poetry – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2009
• Podróże z tej i nie z tej ziemi – migawki z sześciu kontynentów: Europy, obu Ameryk, Australii, Azji i Afryki: prose/memoirs – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2010
• Borzęcin. Poezja i proza Józefa Barana: poetry/prose – Borzęcin: Gminna Biblioteka Publiczna w Borzęcinie, 2014
• Spadając patrzeć w gwiazdy: prose/memoirs – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka ,2013
• Scenopis od wieczności: correspondence with Sławomir Mrożek – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2014
• Szczęście w czapce niewidce: poetry – Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2015