Dec 3 5PM Poet, Translator, Publisher Jim Kates

Jim Kates 

 See it live at 5PM  Dec 3. at  http://somervillemedia.org  



Jim Kates will talk about a new book from his Zephyr Press  Paper-thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi, that he skillfully translated. We will also touch on his recent poetry, and other projects.




One of the first Kazakhstani women poets to gain international attention, Aigerim Tazhi offers incisive and intimate observations in these seemingly spare poems that “pour out a little from an overflowing heart.”




Paper-thin Skin is her debut collection in translation. Readers will find images of fish, insects, birds, the sea, the sky, humans seeking connection, and death in these succinct poems, along with windows, mirrors, and eyes: these are poems of observation and deep reflection. Tazhi gently insists that we look at words and the world “in the eye,” as she seeks to create what translator J. Kates calls a “mystic community of communication.”




Aigerim Tazhi  (Айгерим Тажи) was born in the western Kazakhstani city of Aktobe (formerly called Aktyubinsk) in 1981. She is a graduate of the Aktyubinsk (Zhubanov) State University. Her only book of poetry so far, БОГ-О-СЛОВ (“THEO-LOG-IAN” but there is a play on words that could come out "GOD O' WORDS") was published in 2003. She has received numerous literary prizes in Kazakhstan and Russia for poems in the collection, and in 2011 she was a finalist for the Russian Debut Prize in poetry. Her work has been translated into English, French, and Armenian, and published in prominent literary magazines. Tazhi was one of the creators of a project of literary installations, “The Visible Poetry,” in 2009. She lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.




J. Kates is the author of several collections of his own poetry, and the translator of more than a dozen books by Russian and French poets, including Tatiana Shcherbina, Mikhail Aizenberg, Mikhail Yeryomin, Aleksey Porvin, Jean-Pierre Rosnay, and Sergey Stratanovsky. He co-translated four books of Latin American poetry, was the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and was the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation, and a Käpylä Translation Prize.

Poet Brad Rose on Poet to Poet Nov. 19 5PM

 

Poet Brad Rose

see the show live at 5PM  http://sommedia.org



 Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. Brad is a sociologist, and is the author of a collection of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015,  http://pinkx-ray.com and Amazon.com.) Brad has three forthcoming books of poems: Momentary Turbulence and WordinEdgeWise, from Cervena Barva Press, and de/tonations from Nixes Mate Press. He is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, his poetry and micro fiction have appeared in, The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, Clockhouse, Hunger Mountain, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore Review, Cultural Weekly, Into the Void, and other publications. His story, “Desert Motel,” appears in the anthology Best Microfiction, 2019.  Brad’s website is: www.bradrosepoetry.com Selected readings can be heard at https://soundcloud.com/bradrose1 A list of publications is available at: http://bradrosepoetry.com/2019/03/a-list-of-publications/

Doug Holder interviews Lloyd Schwartz Nov. 5 Poet to Poet

 

Lloyd Schwartz

1941–

see the show live at 5PM  http://somervillemedia.org

Lloyd Schwartz was born on November 29, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1962 and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976.

Schwartz's most recent book of poetry is Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which was preceded by Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press, 2000), Goodnight, Gracie (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and These People (Wesleyan University Press, 1981). He is also editor of two volumes of collected works by Elizabeth Bishop: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America, 2008), which he co-edited with Robert Giroux, and Prose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Schwartz's most recent book, Music In—and On—the Air (PFP, 2013), is a collection of his music reviews that appeared on NPR's Fresh Air.  

About his work, the poet Richard Howard has said: "The poet has extended his reach as well as his grasp, and we are the richer for it, through no less ravaged: these people (and these poems) are devastated by life, of which they offer us, unnervingly, the flagrant shards."

His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and The Best American Poetry series. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Schwartz has taught at Boston State College, Queens College, and Harvard University, and is currently Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He is also the senior editor of classical music for New York Arts and a regular commentator on NPR's Fresh Air. In 2019, he was named the Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts, a two-year appointment.