Karpowicz moved to Wrocław studied Polish philology at Wroclaw University where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. and became an assistant professor. He later received the Literary Prize of the City of Wroclaw in 1958.
Life after leaving Poland
In 1971, Karpowicz received the prestigious fellowship of the "Foundation pour une Entraide Intellectuelle Europeenne" in Paris. Two years later in 1973 he was invited to join International Working Program at the University of Iowa. In 1974, he was appointed visiting associate professor of Polish literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago,[4] where he taught for two years. Although he has never received any official literary awards in Poland because of his stance as a political dissident, he was awarded the prestigious Alfred Jurzykowski Prize in New York City and was twice a recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Annual Award.[5]
He spent the next two years in West Germany (1976–78) in Bonn, West Berlin, Munich, and Regensburg Universities. In 1978, he returned to the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures as a full professor.[6]
Karpowicz retired from the now Department of Slavic and Baltic Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993. Karpowicz died on June 26, 2005, at his home in Oak Park, Illinois. His remains were repatriated and he was buried on August 3, 2005, along with his wife Maria in Osobowice Cemetery in Wrocław.
Legacy
Contemporary Polish-Italian sculptor Krzysztof Michał Bednarski dedicated his 2016 art exhibition Gravity to Karpowicz.[7]
It was announced in 2019 that Karpowicz's villa in Wrocław would become the future home of Nobel LaureateOlga Tokarczuk's Foundation.[8] Aside from Tokarczuk, Agnieszka Holland and Ireneusz Grin will join her on the foundation's board of directors. The writer will allocate the 350,000 zlotys she was awarded upon winning the Nobel Prize.[9]
Współcześni polscy pisarze i badacze literatury. Słownik biobibliograficzny, T. 4, pod red. J. Czachowskiej, A. Szałagan. Warszawa: WSiP. 1996. p. 66. ISBN83-02-05974-9.
Polscy pisarze współcześni 1939-1991. Warszawa: PWN. p. 173. ISBN8301115939.
"Gramatyka poezji"?. Warszawa.
Krystyna Latawiec, „Dramat poetycki po 1956 roku: Jarosław M. Rymkiewicz, Stanisław Grochowiak, Tymoteusz Karpowicz”, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej, Kraków 2007