History
Dzejnieki 2022
Carolyn Forché
Carolyn Forché is an American poet whose concern for human rights is reflected in her writing, especially in the collection The Country Between Us (1981), which examines events she witnessed in El Salvador. Forché was educated at Michigan State (B.A., 1972) and Bowling Green State (M.F.A., 1975) universities. Thereafter she taught at a number of colleges and universities. Her first collection of poetry, Gathering the Tribes (1976), evokes her childhood, her Slovak ancestry, and reflections on sexuality, family, and race. From 1978 to 1980 Forché was a journalist in El Salvador, where, in addition to her involvement in Amnesty International as a human-rights advocate, she translated works by Salvadoran poets. Her work on behalf of human rights became a major focus of her poetry, much of which depicts the terrible cruelties that were inflicted on children victimized by the war. Forché also edited several books, including Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993).
Christos Koukis
Christos Koukis was born in 1979 and he is a poet. He has published poetry books in Greece, France, India and Serbia and poems of his have been translated in ten languages. He has participated in poetry anthologies in Greece and other countries and in several international poetry festivals. He has worked in poetry and culture magazines and has written lyrics for songs. He collaborated in an international project for Documenta 14 Athens. He is the director of the Crete International Poetry Festival. He lives and works in Athens.
Christopher Merill
Christopher Merrill has published seven collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.
Dennis Maloney
Dennis Maloney is a poet and translator. A number of volumes of his own poetry have been published including The Map Is Not the Territory: Poems & Translations, Just Enough and Listening to Tao Yuan Ming. A bilingual German/English, Empty Cup was published in Germany in 2017. Recent collections include The Things I Notice Now and The Faces of Guan Yin. His work has been translated into a dozen languages. His works of translation include: The Stones of Chile by Pablo Neruda, The Landscape of Castile by Antonio Machado, Between the Floating Mist:Poems of Ryokan,and the The Poet and the Sea by Juan Ramon Jimenez. He is also the editor and publisher of the widely respected White Pine Press in Buffalo, NY.
Gökçenur Ç.
Gökçenur Ç. is a poet, translator, editor and poetry activist based in Istanbul. He has seven poetry books in Turkish, with his first book he’s got Arkadaş Z. Özger Best Debut Poetry Book Prize and with his latest book he’s got Sabahattin Kudret Aksal Literature Prize and Metin Altıok Poetry Prize. He was the co-editor of the Turkish domain in Poetry International portal and is on the editorial board of Macedonian-based international literary magazine Blesok. He also edited several issues of magazines, poetry and poetry in translation books. He has translated and published selected poetry books of Wallace Stevens, Paul Auster, Ursula Le Guin and many other world poets into Turkish. He is a member of Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature. He has participated and organized poetry translation workshops and festivals in many countries. He has been the curator and co-director of Word Express; co-director of international poetry festivals Offline Istanbul, Mosaic of Metaphors Gaziantep, and Turkish American Poetry Days; and board member of Nilüfer International Poetry Festival, Crete International Poetry Festival and Kritya International Poetry Movement.
Ida Börjel
Ida Börjel, poet and translator. Currently lives in Malmö, Sweden.
In her award winning books of poetry, including Sond (Probe), Skåneradio (Radio Scania), Konsumentköplagen: juris lyrik (The Consumers Purchase Act: juridical lyricisms), and MA, she is enquiring into and trying to enact our contemporary, linguistic and societal conditions in relation to different forms of authority, sovereignty and juridical systems.
For the latest edition of her "Miximum Ca Canny The Sabotage Manuals you cutta da pay we cutta da shob", she invited 21 colleagues worldwide to sabotage the manuscript. Her latest book, Arvodet Marginalintäkten (The Fee The Marginal Revenue) are radio plays encircling the language of Economish, and how that language of argumentation affects social distancing, or the distance between our hearts.
Börjel has translated Valzhyna Mort's Music for The Dead and Resurrected and Solmaz Sharif's Look into Swedish. As a co-translator she has translated poetry books from Russian by Maria Stepanova and Galina Rymbu.
Inga Gaile
Inga Gaile is poet, author of seven poetry collections and fiction writer: four novels and one collection of short stories. She is chair-woman of PEN Latvia and organizer of women standup group in Riga. In 2016. the first novel The glass shards is published. Her first detective novel Invisibles was published in 2017. Collection of short stories Ways of milk was published in 2018th. Novel The Beautiful ones in 2019. received Latvian literature award as the best novel of the year. In 2020. her novel Writer of her own is published. She has poetry collections published in English, Spanish, Polish and other languages. Her novels are translated in Estonian and Lithuanian. With her unique brand of humor, she explores inner states of being, her own experiences, the everyday lives of women and stigmatized groups of society, while promoting equal rights.
Matthias Göritz
Matthias Göritz was born in Hamburg in 1969. His translations (with Uda Strätling) include John Ashbery’s Girls on the Run and Flow Chart, and books by Rae Armantrout, Ann Lauterbach, Mark Strand, and Nicholas Baker. He’s the author of three volumes of poetry—Loops (2001), Pools (2006), and Tools (2012)—two novellas, and three novels: The Short Dream of Jakob Voss (winner of the Hamburg Literature Prize, Radio Bavaria Prize, and the Mara Cassens Prize); Dreamers and Sinners (winner of the Robert Gernhardt Fiction Prize); and Parker. He teaches in the Comparative Literature Department at Washington University in St. Louis.
Mario Bojórquez
Los Mochis, Sinaloa, México, 1968 Poet, essayist and traslator. Studied Hispanic Language and Literature at National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM. He has published eight collections of poetry amongst them Hablar Sombras (2013), Memorial de Ayotzinapa (2016), Aquí todo es memoria (2016), Memoria de lo vivido (2019) and El fuego es mi nombre exacto (2021). He has been awarded the most prestigious poetry prizes such Abigael Bohórquez Poetry Prize (1996), the National Prize for Literary Essay José Revueltas (2010), the Alambra Prize for American Poetry in Granada, Spain (2012), the Distinction Prince and Poet Tecayehuatzin of Huexotzinco (2012), the Ignacio Rodriguez Galván Medal (2015), Premiul Fara Frontiere of the Festivalul de Carte Transilvania, Rumania (2016) and the Klísthenes Medal of Demos Aigaleo, Greece (2017). He is the editor of the online literary magazine www.circulodepoesia.com and Director of the Mexico City Poetry Festival, Valparaíso México, Visor Libros México and Círculo de Poesía Press. Is a member of the National System of Art Creators, SNCA, México (2007-2023) and he has the fellowship for the Portuguese translation of Fernando Pessoa at the Instituto Camões da Cooperação e Lingua Portuguesa, Portugal (2020-2022).
Radu Vancu
Radu Vancu (Sibiu, Romania, 1978) is a Romanian poet, scholar and translator. Since 2019, he is the president of PEN Romania. He works as an associate professor at the Faculty of Letters and Arts at the „Lucian Blaga” University from Sibiu. He is editor-in-chief of the Transilvania magazine - and also an editor of the Poesis Internațional magazine. He is the national editor of the Romanian section for the Poetry International website. Starting with 2002, he has published eight books of poems, for which he was awarded several prizes, both national and international; his poetry was translated in circa 20 languages, either in anthologies/magazines or as individual books. He has also published a novel, Transparența (2018), and two volumes of a diary (2017, 2021), which were awarded several prizes. He has also published two children novellas and a book collecting his social & political articles. His scholarly publications include two book-length essays on Mihai Eminescu and Mircea Ivănescu, as well as a book on the anti-humanist poetics of modernity. He has coordinated several anthologies of modern and contemporary Romanian poetry, either alone or in collaboration with Mircea Ivănescu, Claudiu Komartin, or Marius Chivu. He has translated novels and poetry, mainly from the works of John Berryman and W.B. Yeats; he is also the translator of the on-going four-volume Ezra Pound edition coordinated by H.-R. Patapievici. He is an organizer of the International Poetry Festival in Sibiu Poets in Transylvania (2013-ongoing).
Semyon Khanin
Semyon Khanin (1970, Riga) is a poet, translator, editor, artist and performer. He is an author of the books Tol'ko chto (2003), Opushchennye podrobnosti (2008), Vplav' (2013), A vam ne kazhetsa, chto eti vashi p'at' minut kak-to slishkom sil'no zat'anulis' (2015), No ne tem (selected poems, 2017), and Posignal' (2019). He is a translator of Latvian and American poetry into Russian, and editor of numerous poetry collections of Russian and Latvian poets. He has authored an anthology Latvian/Russian Poetry. Poems in Russian Written by Latvian Poets (2011) with a critical analysis of the material. His books of poems appeared in Latvian, Czech, Ukrainian, German, Serbian, Georgian, Spanish, Hungarian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish and Italian translations. He is the founding member of the multimedia poetry project Orbita, a creative collective of poets and visual artists whose works create a dialogue between various cultures and genres (including literature, music, video, and photography, among others). He is author of performances and installations One Face Theatre, Three-Dimensional Poetry etc. His poems in English translation have been published in: Common Knowledge, World Literature Today, Poem, Supplement, Poetry International, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Brooklin Rail, Poetry Wales, Artful Dodge, Hit Parade: The Orbita Group (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), and Orbita: The Project (Arc Publications, 2018). Khanin particapated in numerous poetry and art festivals, and is a laureat of vaious prizes.
Tara Skurtu
Tara Skurtu is an American poet/writer, writing coach, and public speaker. A two-time Fulbright grantee and recipient of a Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and two Academy of American Poets prizes, she is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania and the full poetry collections The Amoeba Game and forthcoming Faith Farm.
Her poems have appeared in Salmagundi, The Kenyon Review, Plume, The Common, The Baffler, and Poetry Wales, and her work has been translated into over ten languages.
Tara holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was a lecturer in creative writing and taught composition to incarcerated students through BU’s Prison Education Program. She gives talks and seminars on poetry and the creative process internationally, and has presented at TEDx, CreativeMornings, and The Power of Storytelling.
Tara is the founder of the viral online arts initiative International Poetry Circle, and she is on the steering committee of Writers for Democratic Action. Currently she is working on a collection of essays, Don’t Ask Me Why I Live Here.
Volha Hapeyeva
Volha Hapeyeva (born in Minsk (Belarus), 1982, is an award-winning poet who also writes prose, drama and occasional books for children, and who collaborates with electronic musicians and visual artists to create audio-visual performances. Her work has been translated into more than 15 languages with poems published in countries including the USA, Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia, Georgia, Lithuania, etc. So far, Volha is the author of 14 books in Belarusian, including the most recent books of poetry “Paradox “Niemaŭlia”.Tractatus Poeticus” (2022), “words that happened to me” (2020), “Black Poppies” (2019), “The Grammar of Snow”, the novel “Solitude that lived next door” (2021) and the novel “Camel-Travel” (2019). In English there appeared her poetry book “In My Garden of Mutants” (Arc Publication, 2021); in German – a poetry collection “Mutantengarten” (Edition Thanhäuser, 2020) and a novel “Camel-Travel” (Droschl Verlag, 2021). Volha also translates poetry from different languages (e.g., English, German, Japanese, etc.). She holds a PhD in linguistics. She has participated in numerous literary festivals and conferences all over the world and has completed residencies in countries including Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Latvia. She was awarded the 2019/20 ‘Writer of the City of Graz’ scholarship (Austria), 2021/2022 – Writer-in-Exile scholarship from the German PEN-Centre, and became a DAAD Fellow of 2022.
Yolanda Castaño
Poet, essayist, editor and curator Yolanda Castaño is director of the International Writer’s residence Residencia Literaria 1863 in A Coruña, Galicia. The most international name in Galician contemporary poetry, she has published six poetry collections in Galician and Spanish (Depth of field and Second Tongue among the last ones), she has poems translated into more than 30 different languages, but also poetry volumes in English, Italian, French, Macedonian, Serbian and Armenian. She has participated in festivals and literary manifestations all over 40 countries of Europe, America, Asia and the north of Africa. A finalist of the National Poetry Prize, she is the Winner of the National Critics Award, the Espiral Maior Poetry Award, the Fundación Novacaixagalicia Prize, the Ojo Crítico (best poetry book by a young author in Spain), the Estandarte Award (best poetry collection in Spain in 2020) and the ‘Author of the Year’ by the Galician Booksellers’ Association. She has been awarded International fellowships including the IWTCR in Rhodes, Villa Waldberta (Munich), the HIP-Beijing (China), Hawthornden Castle (Scotland), Valparaíso Foundation (Andalusia) and Saari (Finland). She is also the author of translations, literary editions, biographies, history of Galician Poetry and poetry books for children. She is a relevant cultural activist too, regularly organizing festivals, literary and translation workshops and the only international monthly readings series in all Spain, all of them hosting local to international poets since 2009. She has mixed poetry with music, visual arts, video, architecture, film in 360º, comic, dance and even cookery, being awarded for that too.
