ANACREON (c. 575 BCE – c. 490 BCE) was born in the Ionian city of Teos in Asia Minor. He became a court poet to Polycrates on Samos and to the tyrants Hipparchus and Critias in Athens. Considered the last writer of solo song, he composed panegyrics as well as the personal lyric poetry for which he is best known in later eras. 

RAFFAELLO BALDINI was born in 1924 in Sanangelo di Romagna and has lived in Milan since 1955. He has published five poetry collections, all written in the Romagnolo dialect: E’ solitèri (Galeati, 1976), La náiva (Einaudi, 1982), Furistir (Einaudi, 1988), Ad nòta (Mondadori, 1995), as well as La náiva, Furistir, Ciacri (Einaudi, 2000). A new collection, Intercity, was published by Einaudi in 2003. He has written three theatrical monologues: Carta canta; Zitti tutti; In fondo a destra. His collection Furistir was awarded the Viareggio Prize and Ad nòta was awarded the Bagutta Prize.

RON D. K. BANERJEE, poet, translator and literary scholar, was born in India and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. He translates poetry from Sanskrit, Bengali, French, Italian, Russian and Czech (the last two with the help of his wife Maria Nemcova Banerjee ). His publications include: Far From You (Toronto, 1981) from the Czech of Pavel Javor; Poetry From Bengal (UNESCO, 1989); L’Antica Fiamma (Galleria Pegaso, 1995), a prose narrative written in Italian, framing a selection of his own poems on Italian themes. Sonnets for the Madonna/Sonetti per la Madonna (Maschietto e Masolino, Fiesole, 1999) were written in English and translated into Italian by Manlio Cancogni. Currently, with Alessandro Carrero as his translator, he is preparing another bilingual edition of his poems, to be published in Italy.

ADRIA BERNARDI is the author of In the Gathering Woods, a collection of stories awarded the 2000 Drew Heinz Prize. Her novel, The Day Laid on the Altar, was awarded the 1999 Bakeless Fiction Prize. She has translated Gianni Celati’s Adventures in Africa, the poetry of Tonino Guerra in Abandoned Places, and a theatrical monologue by Raffaello Baldini, Page Proof. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

IVAN CAÑADAS earned his PhD from the University of Sydney with a dissertation on the theaters of Spain and England at the turn of the seventeenth century; the project involved a significant amount of translation of Spanish material into English. He is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Hallym University, South Korea. He has directed his own English-language adaptations of plays by Federico García Lorca and Fernando Arrabal, and is currently completing a bilingual edition of a Golden Age Spanish comedy, Lope de Vega’s La villana de Getafe.

LEE CHADEAYNE has taught at Ohio State University, Boston University and Northeastern University. Until his retirement in 2003 he was President of Wordnet, a commercial translation service linking nearly 2,000 technical and scientific translators worldwide. His previously translated works are in the areas of history, literature and social sciences and include Wolfgang Seiferth’s Synagogue and Church in the Middle Ages: Two Symbols in Art and Literature and Max Lüthi’s Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. He has been a book reviewer for The German Quarterly, Regional Editor of the Massachusetts Foreign Language Bulletin, and editor of the Chronicle, the monthly publication of the American Translators Association.

GERALD CHAPPLE was born in Montréal in 1937 and has been translating contemporary German and Austrian authors for twenty-five years. Among his recent translations, those of Ursula Krechel, Josef Haslinger, and Kunert have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Fiction, and Modern Poetry in Translation. His translation of Barbara Frischmuth’s Chasing after the Wind: Four Stories (1996) received a Translation Award from the government of Austria. He is putting together a selection of Kunert’s poems with the working title, A Stranger at Home.

ODYSSEAS ELYTIS (1911-1996), Greek poet and winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature was born Odysseas Alepoudhelis on Crete Elytis first started publishing poetry in 1935; his early work was inspired by French Surrealism but was informed by a distinctly Greek, Aegean heritage and aesthetic. His poetry (twenty-three collections or book-length poems) and essays have been translated into many languages and some of his poetry was set to music by internationally famous Greek composers Manos Hatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, and became popular songs. Elytis was also a visual artist, and wrote on art as well. The prose poem translated in this issue is from the collection he published in 1940, Prosanatolismoi (Bearings).

MICHAEL FARMAN was born and raised in England but has lived in Texas for the past twelve years, where he works as an electronics engineer at the National Scientific Balloon Facility under contract to NASA. Many years ago he studied Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, later in Hong Kong, which stimulated a lifelong interest in Chinese culture. He began translating classical Chinese poetry about four years ago. His translations have since appeared frequently in literary magazines and translation journals (including Beacons, Bellingham Review, Branches, exchanges, The Literary Review, Marlboro Review, New Millennium Writings, Raven Chronicles, Renditions, Rhino, Two Lines) and twelve are featured in the anthology A Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics, recently published by Renditions. His first complete book, Clouds and Rain, Lyrics of Love and Desire from Medieval China, was published by Piper’s Ash in November 2003.

JERZY FICOWSKI, now 80 years old, is best known to English readers through Regions of the Great Heresy, his seminal critical/biographical text on Bruno Schulz (published by Norton in 2003) and through his poetry, often Holocaust-related—he was in Warsaw during the Holocaust and fought in the Warsaw Uprising—which has appeared sporadically in anthologies. The stories translated in this issue are from his only book of prose fiction, a collection entitled Waiting for the Dog to Sleep.

COLA FRANZEN’s recent publications include Horses in the Air and Other Poems by Jorge Guillén (City Lights, 1999), bilingual, winner of the Harold Morton Landon translation Prize awarded by the Academy of American Poets; All Night Movie, novel by Alicia Borinsky, translated with the author (Northwestern university press, 2002), and two volumes of work by Saúl Yurkievich: Background Noise/Ruido de Fondo, poems, and In the Image and Likeness, prose pieces (Catbird Press, 2003). In 2004 she received the Gregory Kolovakis Award from PEN American Center. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

YOKOTA FUMIKO (1909-1985) contributed during the 1920s to the Japanese women’s literary arts journals, Nyonin geijutsu (Women and the Arts), Kagayaku (To Shine), and Fujin bungei (Ladies’ Literary Arts), and also participated in NAPF (Nipponica Artista Proleta Federacio), the Japanese Proletarian Writers League. In 1936, Satô Haruo and Kawabata Yasunari nominated her story, “Hakujitsu no fumi” ("Letter in Broad Daylight") for the prestigious Akutagawa literary prize. Several years later, Yokota joined the rightwing Nihon Rôman-ha (Japan Romantic School). During her stay in Manchuria between 1938-1946, Yokota was an active participant in Manchurian literary circles, publishing essays and short stories in journals such as Manshû josei (Manchu Woman), Manshû gyôsei (Manchurian Administration), Manshû bungei nenkan (Manchurian Literary Arts Annual).

SØREN ALBERTO GAUGER is a Canadian translator, writer and lecturer living in Krakow, Poland; two books of his short fiction have been published (2003) by Ravenna Press (USA) and Twisted Spoon Press (Prague/USA).

BOGOMIL GJUZEL (1939- ), poet, prose writer, playwright, essayist, translator, was born in Chachak, Serbia, took a degree in English at the University of Skopje, and studied at the University of Edinburgh as a British Council scholar. From 1966-1971 and again from 1985-1998 he served as dramaturg for the Dramski Theatre in Skopje. During his distinguished career he has participated in the International Writing Program in Iowa, and in poetry festivals in San Francisco, Rotterdam, Herleen, Maastricht, and Valencia. His work has been translated into many languages, including Czech and Catalan. One of the founders of the Independent Writers of Macedonia Association, he chaired it in 1994 and has served as editor-in-chief of its bimonthly journal. From 1999 to 2003 he directed the Struga Poetry Evenings International Festival. Author of two dozen volumes of poetry (two of which won the Brothers Miladinov Prize for the Best Book of the Year, in 1966 and 1972), several books of essays, and four plays, Gjuzel is also an editor and a prolific translator. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra is the tenth Shakespearian play translated for the stage by Gjuzel since l969; he has translated and adapted plays by O’Neill, Bond, Sheppard, Pinter; poetry by T.S. Eliot, Auden, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, and others. His translation of scenes from Antony and Cleopatra is published here for the first time, as are the two poems from Ted Hughes’ last collection, The Birthday Poems. A recent volume of poems, The Wolf at the Door, was published in a bilingual edition by Xenos Books (California, 2001), English translation by P. H. Liotta, with an introduction by Charles Simic.

MEIR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT (1819-1887), born in Denmark to Jewish parents, struggled throughout his life to overcome his position as an outsider without compromising his integrity. Although he was prolific, with four novels, several volumes of stories, plays, essays and memoirs, the recognition he merited eluded him during his lifetime, and his works have only recently begun to be reissued. Some may be found on the Danish Royal Library website.

GERMÁN GUERRA (born in Guantánamo, Cuba in 1966) is poet, essayist, and editor. His publications include Dos Poemas (Strumento, Miami, 1998) and Metal (Dylemma, Miami, 1998). The poems included here are among a group to be published in the anthology Island of My Hunger, forthcoming from City Lights, San Francisco, Summer 2005. A number of his poems were included in Reunión de Ausentes: Antología de poetas cubanos (Término, Ohio, 1998) and in Las caras del amor: 200 poetas de más de 1000 ciudades del mundo (Versal Editorial group, Massachusetts, 1999). He is the founder and director of the Colección Strumento since 1998, a small press that produces books of poetry, each of which is handcrafted and unique. His poems as well as essays and articles on aesthetics and literary criticism have appeared in journals in Cuba, Spain, France and the United States, as well as on the Internet. He has lived in Miami since 1992.

TED HUGHES (1930-1998) was born and raised in Yorkshire, England. As a student at Cambridge University, he met and married Sylvia Plath (who was on a Fulbright fellowship after graduating from Smith College), and their marriage—and especially her suicide in 1963 (followed by the copy-cat suicide in 1969 of his second wife, with whom he had been having an affair when Plath died, and who took with her the daughter she had borne to Hughes)—shaped the public’s perception of Hughes throughout his life. His first collection of poetry (The Hawk in the Rain) was published in 1957 and established him as an exceptionally gifted young poet. Hughes published prolifically throughout his life: poetry, children’s stories (originally written for his own and Plath’s children), and translations. In 1984 he was appointed Poet Laureate of England. The two poems in this issue, translated into Macedonian by the eminent Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjuzel, are from Hughes’ last collection, The Birthday Letters (1998). This work too has given rise to controversy because of its expressly autobiographical nature: the poems purport to chronicle his relationship with Sylvia Plath, and perforce present his side, or construction, of the story.

KU HYO-SO is one of Korea’s leading authors. He has written short stories and novels. His work is marked by stylistic versatility, a mastery of different genres, a broad range of often daring subjects and bold innovation.

WALTER H. KOKERNOT is Associate Professor and chair of English at Ohio Dominican University in Columbus, Ohio. His research interests include: Mark Twain, Matthew Arnold, Walker Percy, George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and the Victorian Period. His most recent article, on Matthew Arnold’s poetry, will be appearing in Victorian Poetry in the summer 2005 issue.

KIMBERLY KONO teaches modern Japanese language and literature at Smith College. She is currently working on a manuscript, tentatively titled Writing Imperial Relations, which explores Japanese writers’ negotiation of their relation to Japan, the colonies and empire through the tropes of family, romance, and marriage during the late colonial period. She is also translating several works of Japanese colonial fiction.

PHILLIP KRUMMRICH holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and chairs English, Foreign Languages and Philosophy at Morehead State University in Kentucky. He has published translations and original poetry, and most recently a bilingual edition of Fernando Pessoa’s Quadras ao Gõsto Popular (Quatrains in the Popular Style), Mellen Press:2003.

GÜNTER KUNERT, at seventy-five, is one of the three or four best German-language poets writing today. Born in Berlin, he was “encouraged” by the East German government to move from East Berlin in 1979; he has lived north of Hamburg ever since. The poems here, taken from three of his four dozen books of poetry, essays and other prose, exemplify his finely-tuned irony. The translations try to reproduce his seemingly casual metrical artistry, which make a German poem by Kunert immediately identifiable.

INGRID LANSFORD grew up bilingual in a German family in Denmark. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin. After teaching English at a community college she worked as a full-time freelance technical and medical translator for ten years and after 2002, has concentrated on literary translation. She has published six literary prose translations from German in the bilingual journal Dimension2, and recently contributed a translation from Danish to the anthology THRESHOLDS, World Literature from the Heart of Texas (2003), a runner-up for the Texas Institute of Letters Award.

SIEGFRIED LENZ, one of Germany’s most accomplished storytellers, was born in Lyck in the former East Prussia in 1926. He was drafted into the German navy at seventeen, deserted toward the end of the war, and spent time in a British internment camp. After several years of studying both German and English literature in Hamburg, he accepted an internship at Die Welt, a German newspaper run by the Allied occupation forces. During his years as an editor, he wrote the novel Es waren Habichte in der Luft (There were Hawks in the Air), which was serialized in Die Welt and gave him his first taste of literary success. Over the past fifty years, Lenz has written more than a dozen novels including The German Lesson (1968), very successful radio plays, many short stories, and numerous essays. He has won a dozen major awards, but the one that means most to him is being made honorary citizen of Hamburg, the city where he has been living for close to sixty years. “Lucas, Gentle Servant” came out in 1953 as one of Lenz’ first short stories.

SYLVIA MAIZELL has studied Russian Literature at the University of Chicago, in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and has taught Russian for many years. For the past decade she has worked as a translator from Russian, primarily of published émigré writers, among them Emil Draitser, Felix Roziner, Azari Messurer, Vladimir Matlin, and Ludmila Petrushevskaya.

MARTIN MCKINSEY’s forthcoming translations include The Wavering Scales by Yannis Ritsos (with Scott King) from Red Dragonfly, and Cafes and Comets after Midnight: the Poems of Nikos Engonopoulos from Green Integer. He teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

CHRISTOFOROS MILIONIS (1932 - ) was born in Ioannina, Greece. A classical philologist and literary critic as well as a prolific writer of fiction, he has taught in Greece and Cyprus and served on the editorial boards of several pioneering literary journals. In 1986 he won the First National Short Fiction Prize for his collection of short stories, Kalamas and Acheron. In 2000 he received the Diavazo Magazine prize for fiction for his collection The Ghosts of York. In addition to numerous volumes of critical essays and many critical editions, he has published two novels, a collection of novellas, and ten collections of short stories. His work has been translated into Hungarian, Russian, Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and English.

GIAMPIERO NERI (1927—) was born in Erba, Italy and lives in Milan. A leading exponent of the Milan school, he has published seven volumes of poetry: L’aspetto occidentale del vestito [The Western Look of Dress] (Milan: Guanda, 1976), Liceo [High School] (Milan-Palermo: Acquario-Guanda, 1986), Dallo stesso luogo [From the Same Place] (Milan: Coliseum, 1992), Teatro naturale [Natural Theater] (Milan: Mondadori, 1998), Erbario con figure [Herbarium with Pictures] (Como: Lietocolle, 2000), Finale (Como: Dialogolibri, 2002], Armi e mestieri [Weapons and Trades] (Milan: Mondadori, 2004). A collection of his prose writings will be published by Lietocolle: La serie dei fatti, quindici prose di Giampiero Neri [The Series of Facts, Fifteen Prose Writings by Giampiero Neri], edited and with an introduction by Victoria Surliuga.

THALIA PANDIRI, editor in chief of Metamorphoses, is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Smith College and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Most of her published translations are from Modern Greek and Medieval Latin.

LUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA (1938- ) has been called “one of Russia’s finest living writers,” and her work has been widely translated. The Time: Night was short-listed for the Russian Booker Prize and translated into over twenty languages. In 2002 she received Russia’s prestigious Triumph Prize for lifetime achievement. Other works include Immortal Love; On the Way to Eros; The Mystery of the House; Real-Life Tales; Find Me, Sleep.

MARCIN PIEKOSZEWSKI holds an M.A. in English literature from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and has worked on translations of American playwright John Stepping’s works for the Polish theatre.

FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS (1580-1645) was the leading satirist of Spain’s Golden Age.

JENNIFER RATHBUN is  a Lecturer in Spanish at Mount Holyoke College. She specializes in US-Mexico Border literature, poetry translation and contemporary Argentinean theatre. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.

JUAN ARMANDO ROJAS, Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Amherst College, has published Lluvia de lunas (Mexico City, 1999) and Río vertebral (Chihuahua, 2002). His work has also been included in several anthologies. Rojas received a B.A. and M.A. in Spanish from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.

THOMAS H. ROHLICH is Professor of Japanese Language and Literature at Smith College, where he has recently developed a seminar on Kyoto for first-year students. His most recent publication is an essay called “Kyoto Then and Now” in the catalogue of the Smith College Museum of Art’s special exhibition entitled “Confronting Tradition: Contemporary Art from Kyoto.”

DORIS RUNEY is a bilingual (Romanian and English) writer and poet with a background in the fine and performing arts, pursuing graduate work in Translation Studies at Wayne State University while also working as a freelance writer and creative artist, and teaching. Her dissertation is a praxis in translation and adaptation of Ionel Teodoreanu’s novel, Lorelei, which she also hopes to produce as an independent film.

CHAE-PYONG SONG, Assistant Professor of English at Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan, has taught postcolonial literatures in English, Asian literature, and literary theory. He has published on Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, and English education in the age of globalization. He has also served as a columnist for Literature and Thought, a monthly literary review published in Korea.

PAUL STATT holds a B.A. in European Studies from Amherst College. He has taught mathematics at the high school level, edited computer magazines, and written essays and reviews for trade publications. He is currently the director of Media Relations at Amherst College. This is his first published translation.

VICTORIA SURLIUGA (1972—) grew up in Turin, Italy. She completed her undergraduate work at Mount Holyoke College, and earned an M.A. in Italian Studies from Brown University and a PhD from Rutgers University. She now teaches Italian Language and Literature at Rice University. She is the author of two poetry collections, Risposte del silenzio [Answers of Silence] (Piacenza: Farnesiana, 1994) and Allergia alla notte [Allergy to the Night] (Udine: Campanotto, 2000). She is currently writing a monograph on Giampiero Neri’s poetry.