Marek Baterowicz, a speaker of Polish, English, Spanish and Italian, gained an MA in Romance Languages from the University of Krakow in 1971. He left Poland in 1985, having suffered censorship of his work from 1981, when martial law was declared in Poland. In Australia, he has contributed on a freelance basis to literary reviews, weeklies and monthlies. He has been a member of the Association of Polish Writers Abroad and of the Asociacion Internacional de Hispanistas. In 1985, he won the Italian Circe Sabadia prize for poetry and, in 1990, he was awarded a $10 000 grant to translate his novella A Manuscript from Amalfi from Polish into English. His work has been read on Radio 2EA from 1987 to 1991 and he has read at the Society of Polish Writers (Cracow) in 1981, the Abbey of Skalka (Krakow) in 1985 and at the Polish Club (Sydney) in 1987. Baterowicz has also translated a number of works from French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese poets.
