More poets and translations in:

Summer 2001

Spring 2001

Winter 2000

Summer 2000

Fall 2000

Spring 2000


All poetry and translation in this issue in alphabetical order.

Poetry from Britain:

Brian Cole

Poetry from India:

Rabindra Swain

Poetry from Israel:

Rochelle Mass

Poetry from Italy:

Erminia Passannanti



Poetry from Lithuania

Kerry Shawn Keys

Poetry from Russia

Osip Mandelshtam

Poetry from Switzerland

Roger Bonner

Poetry from the United States:

Katherine Barham

James Bertolino

Robert Gibbons

Sam Hamill

Christine Hemp

Kevin Kinsella

Jeffrey Levine

Rita Maria Magdaleno

Miriam Sagan

Rebecca Seiferle

Victoria Edwards Tester

lê thi diem thúy

Renata Treitel

Bryan Walpert

Eleanor Wilner

Holly Woodward

Poetry from Uruguay:

Circe Maia

Translators:

Kevin Kinsella

Brian Cole

 		Poetry – Fall 2001


Katherine Barham Katherine Barham moved from rural, central Virginia to the Philadelphia area in July, 1998. A former graduate of the University of Virginia and the Warren MFA Program, she currently teaches American literature and creative writing in the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District. Her poems have appeared in Richmond Arts, The New Southern Literary Messenger, and APR’s Philly Edition 99.


James Bertolino James Bertolino is the author of Precinct Kali & The Gertrude Spicer Story, reprinted online in 2001 by CAPA: Connecticut College’s Contemporary American Poetry Archive, and Making Space For Our Living (CAPA, 1999), 26 Poems from Snail River (Egress Studio, 2000), a chapbook Greatest Hits: 1965-2000 (Pudding House). Other volumes in print include New & Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon), First Credo and Snail River (both QRL Award Series). Recent or forthcoming magazine publications include Notre Dame Review, Pavement Saw, The Raven Chronicles, California Quarterly, Crab Creek Review and such online publications as Switched-on Gutenberg, Arbutus, Salt River Review and Mudlark. Bertolino is on the Creative Writing faculty of Western Washington University.


Roger BonnerRoger Bonner started writing poetry when he was a ten-year-old boy growing up in Los Angeles, California, and has continued doing so ever since. When he was twenty-one, he moved back to his native Switzerland where he now works as an editor and writer for a pharmaceutical company. In the past he has published poetry in such England magazines as Envoi, but also recently in the US online journals Xconnect #16 and in the last two issues of Samsära Quarterly. He is working on a book of poems, short stories, and a collection of humorous columns about the Swiss.For more details, see his website: www.roger-bonner.ch.


Brian ColeBrian Cole was born in Southampton, England in 1932 and has spent his adult life near London. After studying French and German at Oxford University he followed a career in business as a senior executive in three multi-national groups. After retirement he set up an accountancy practice, which traded until 2000, after which he started Brindin Press (see our feature)- with a website which celebrates poetry in translation – http//www.brindin.com. In 1994 his first published work was a translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Captain’s Verses, published by Anvil Press in London and reprinted four times. In 2000 Arc Publications in Todmorden, England published Anthracite, a selection of translations from the Italian of Bartolo Cattafi – this collection was awarded the accolade “Recommended Translation” by the Poetry Book Society in London. In August 2001 Brindin Press published his translations of Circe Maia under the title Yesterday a Eucalyptus, which was also chosen Recommended Translation by the Poetry Book Society, and awarded a translation prize by the British Centre for Literary Translation.


Robert Gibbons‘ sixth chapbook of poems, This Vanishing Architecture, has just been published by Innerer Klang Press. He has work currently in: Conspire, Linnaean Street, Pith, Recursive Angel, Slow Trains and Tatlin’s Tower. His work is forthcoming in Evergreen Review, Janus Head and In Posse. He writes a regular column, “Observations,” for www.niederngasse.com, an online magazine out of Switzerland. Robert works at Northeastern University Library in Boston.


Sam Hamill Sam Hamill has published over a dozen collections of original poetry, including Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995 and Gratitude, as well as three collections of essays, the most recent of which is A Poet’s Work. His ten volumes of translation include The Art of Writing: Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, The Essential Chuang Tzu, Only Companion: Japanese Poems of Love & Longing, The Erotic Spirit and most recently Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese featured in last Fall‘s issue. He is the founding editor of Copper Canyon Press, director of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, and contributing editor at The American Poetry Review.


Christine HempChristine Hemp has recently aired two commentaries with accompanying poems on NPR’s Morning Edition and Living on Earth. Her poetry collection was recently as semi-finalist for Sarabande Press’s Mortion Prize and one of her essays on NPR received a 1st place Society of Professional Journalists. In 1998 she launched a poem into space on a NASA mission sent to monitor the pre-natal activity of stars. She has two chapbooks,Seeing Red (Hobby Horse 1998) and As the Rain Rises (North Beach Press 1999). Her work has appeared in such publications as Harvard Magazine , Yale Angler’s Journal , The Christian Science Monitor, and anthologies by Simon and Schuster, Sherman Asher, and Orchard Presses. She has received Harvard University’s Conway Award for Excellence in Teaching Writing, and she is currently teaching the writing of poetry with Seattle police officers and at-risk teenagers. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.


Shawn Kerry KeysKerry Shawn Keys comes from the Susquehanna Valley of Central Pennsylvania in the United States. He lives in Vilnius, Lithuania where he taught translation theory and creative composition from 1998 to 2000 as a Fulbright lecturer at Vilnius University. Mr. Keys currently works freelance as a poet, translator, and cultural liaison. He has over 30 books to his credit, including translations from Portuguese and Lithuanian, and his own poems rooted in the Appalachia hill country, and in Brazil and India where he lived for considerable time. His work ranges from theatre-dance pieces to flamenco songs to the Tao Te Ching to lyrical and intense ontological concerns. He received the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1992. Selected poems have appeared in Czech and Lithuanian.


KevinKevin J. Kinsella is a poet and translator living in Brooklyn, New York. He recently completed a translation of Osip Mandelshtam’s Tristia. Most recently his poetry and translations have appeared in Cavalcade, Boston Poet, and The Watermark.




Jeffrey Levine‘s Mortal, Everlasting won the 2000 Transcontinental Poetry Award from Pavement Saw Press and is due out this fall. He has previously won the Larry Levis Prize from the Missouri Review, the first annual James Hearst Award from North American Review, the 2001 Kestrel Prize, and most recently, the 2001 Mississippi Review Poetry Award. His work is widely-published in literary journals such as Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Poetry International, Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, and The Journal, and he has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. Jeffrey Levine is Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press.


Circe MaiaCirce Maia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1932 and has lived most of her life in the provincial town of Tacuarembo. Her career devoted to teaching – philosophy and languages – and she has written poetry since her early days. She has translated poetry from English and Greek, and her own poems have been translated into Swedish and English. In 1997 she was the subject of a thirteen page tribute in the influential Argentinian Diario de Poesia – not the first time that organ had reported on her work. In 1999 she was invited by the Norma Group to contribute to a new translation of Shakespeare – she translated Measure for Measure.


Rita Maria MagdalenoRita Maria Magdaleno, the daughter of a Mexican American GI and a German war bride mother, was born in Augsburg, Germany and grew up in south Phoenix. Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, & My Mother, her first poetry collection, will be published in Spring 2003 by University of AZ Press. Her recent poetry appears in Floricanto, Si! A Collection of Latina Poetry (Penguin USA), and Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry ( University of Arizona. Magdaleno lives in Tucson. She teaches as a poet in the schools for the Arizona Commission on the Arts and teachs autobiographical writing at the U of A Extended University, Writing Works Center. April 1999, she was awarded an International Artist’s Exchange and conducted children’s writing workshops for the Union of Community Museums, Oaxaca, Mexico. Magdaleno has received a Fiction Fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She has been a Writing Fellow at Millay Colony for the Arts (New York), The Ucross Foundation (Wyoming), and the Vermont Studio Center.


Osip MandelshtamOsip E. Mandelshtam was born in Warsaw in 1891 but brought up in St. Petersburg. He studied at Heidelberg University and the University of St. Petersburg. The first volume of his poetry, Kamen (Stone), appeared in 1913 and was followed by Tristia (1922) and Poems (1928). After writing a bitter epigram about Stalin, he was arrested, escaping execution only through the intervention of Bukhanin. He was exiled to the Urals where he attempted suicide. In 1937 he was freed to return to Moscow with his wife, but in May 1938 he was rearrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor. His heart was bad and it is likely that he was suffering from a severe nervous breakdown. He died, probably on December 27, 1938, in obscure circumstances en route to the Vladivostok labor camp.


Rochelle Mass Rochelle Mass is an editor and translator. She had two chapbooks published this spring: Where’s My Home? in the Premier Poet’s Series, Rhode Island, and Aftertaste: Poems and Short Fictions from Ride the Wind Publishing in Canada. Canadian-born, she moved to Israel with her husband and daughters in 1973 to a kibbutz in the Jezreal Valley. She now lives in a community crawling up the western flank of the Gilboa mountains in that same valley.


Erminia Passannanti is an Italian poet, translator and essayist. She read Modern Languages at The Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the Salerno University (Italy). She is completing a doctorate at the UCL (London University College) on the poetry of Franco Fortini. Erminia Passannanti has hosted a group of European poets on the occasion of the United Nations celebration of The Year of Dialogue among Civilizations through Poetry. She lives in Oxford (UK) and teaches Italian Literature at the St Clare’s College. She is founding editor of Transference.


Miriam Sagan‘s most recent books include a book on writing, Unbroken Line: Writing in the Lineage of Poetry (Sherman Asher Publishing), a volume of poetry, Inadvertent Altar (La Alameda Press, and an anthology, Another Desert: The Jewish Poetry of New Mexico (edited with Joan Logghe. Sherman Asher Publishing) She is also the founder and editor of Santa Fe Poetry Broadside and participated in the roundtable discussion in The Drunken Boat.

Rabindra SwainRabindra Swain was born in 1960. With a Ph.D. on the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, Swain has also published poems in The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, New Letters, Verse, Quarterly West, Weber Studies, Critical Quarterly,Contemporary Review, Ariel, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writings Abroad, and Poetry Daily. He has published two books of poetry, A Tapestry of Steps (Orient Longman, 1999) and Once Back Home(Har-Anand, 1996), and a book of criticism: The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: a Critical Study (Prestige Books, 2000). At present, Rabindra is Managing Editor of Chandrabhaga, a literary half-yearly edited by Jayanta Mahapatra


Victoria Edwards TesterVictoria Edwards Tester lives in Santa Rita, New Mexico and in the Chiricahua Mountains with her husband. Her debut volume Miracles of Sainted Earth will appear in January of 2002 as the inaugural book for the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series by the University of New Mexico Press. The poems published in this issue of The Drunken Boat are from her forthcoming collection.



lê thi diem thúy lê thi diem thúy is a writer and solo performance artist. Born in Vietnam and raised in southern California, she currently resides in western Massachusetts. Her prose and poetry have appeared in The Massachusetts Review ,Harper’s Magazine, Muae and The Best American Essays of 1997 , as well as in the anthologies The Very Inside, Half & Half, and Watermark . Her solo performance works Red Fiery Summer and the bodies between us have been presented at, among other venues, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, the International Women Playwrights’ Festival in Galway, Ireland, and the New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A book of prose entitled The Gangster We Are All Looking For, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.


Renata TreitelRenata Treitel, teacher, poet and translator, was born in Switzerland, educated in Italy, Argentina, and the United States. She has published a chapbook of poetry, German Notebook (1983). She has translated Susana Thénon’s distancias/distances (Sun & Moon Press, 1994) and Amelia Biagioni’s Las Cacerías/The Hunts forthcoming from Xenos Books in 2001. Her translation of Rosita Copioli’s Splendida Lumina Solis/The Blazing Lights of the Sun (Sun & Moon Press, 1996) was the recipient of a 1991 Witter Bynner Translation Grant and was the 1997 Oklahoma Poetry Award Winner. We have previously published a selection of Rosita Copioli’s Furore delle rose/Wrath of the Roses which was a recipient of a 2000 Witter Bynner Translation Grant. Her poems and translations have appeared in several issues of The Drunken Boat.


Bryan Walpert Bryan Walpert received an MFA from the University of Maryland and expects to receive his Ph.D. in English in June from the University of Denver, where he teaches writing. His poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, The Lyric, The Metropolitan Review , and the anthologies Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan 2000) and 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology (Anamnesis Press 2001). He is seeking a publisher for his manuscript, Uncorrected Proofs .


Eleanor WilnerEleanor Wilner is the author of five previous books of poetry including Reversing The Spell: New and Selected Poems, Otherwise, Sarah ‘s Choice, Shekhinah (all from the University of Chicago Press), and maya (University of Massachusetts Press), as well as a book on visionary imagination, Gathering the Winds, and a translation of Euripides’ Medea (University of Pennsylvania Press). Her work appears in many anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of Poetry 1996 and Best Poems of`1990 (Collier/ Macmillan). Her awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Juniper Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is currently Grace Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.


Holly WoodwardHolly Woodward writes poems, fiction and essays. Her story, “Promiscuity,” won second place in Literal Latte’s contest and appears on their website, “Eros and Psyche” can be read at Archipelago and “Cloud Chambers” was the last winner in Story‘s short short contest.