Zbyněk Hejda is a Czech

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, essayist and translator (mainly from English - Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

; and German - Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...

, Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...

), generally recognised as one of the most important Czech writers after the Second World War. He studied philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 at the Charles University. In 1968 he worked in a publishing house, and then worked in a second hand bookshop, until he signed the Charter 77

Charter 77

Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative in communist Czechoslovakia from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Václav Havel, Jan Patočka, Zdeněk Mlynář, Jiří Hájek, and Pavel Kohout. Spreading the text of the document was...

 and was forced to work as a door-keeper. Since 1990 he taught philosophy at the Charles University. In 1996 he received, together with the poet Jiřina Hauková

Jirina Hauková

Jiřina Hauková was a Czech poet and translator. She was a member of the Group 42 , together with her husband Jindřich Chalupecký.- Biography :...

, the prestigious Jaroslav Seifert

Jaroslav Seifert

Jaroslav Seifert was a Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first collection of poems was published in 1921...

Award for the outstanding lifetime contribution to the Czech literature. Zbyněk Hejda lives in Prague.