“Expatriations: The expatriat edition”
This issue is devoted to the question of ‘expatriations’ – for whatever we might think about expats or the process of expatriation, it is a term that defies being reduced to the singular. Indeed, as the contributors to this edition show, expatriation constitutes a multiple relation to place, culture, language, history and nation: Expatriations: Literatures of Multiplicity. – Helen Lambert, Dublin and Sydney
José Kozer was born in Havana, Cuba (1940) to Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland and Czechoslovakia. In 1960, Kozer left his native Cuba for the USA and taught for many years at Queens College, New York. Kozer is the author of some fifteen volumes of poetry. His work has been translated into English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Hebrew and Greek. A bilingual selection of Kozer’s poetry, Stet, was published in 2005 by Junction Press, New York (edited and translated by Mark Weiss). Kozer lives in Hallandale, Florida: Four poems.
Vahni Capildeo (b. Trinidad, 1973) works in both prose and poetry. Her books include No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), Person Animal Figure (Landfill, 2005) and Undraining Sea (Egg Box, 2009). She has held a Research Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge, a Writing Fellowship at the University of Leeds. Recently she was Creative Writing Professional at the University of Sheffield. She is a Contributing Editor at the Caribbean Review of Book caribbeanreviewofbooks.com. The places that inform her work include Iceland, Trinidad, Yorkshire and India (cf. almostisland.com): Five Measures of Expatriation.
Ken Edwards was born in Gibraltar. His books include the poetry collections Good Science (Roof Books, 1992), eight + six (Reality Street, 2003), No Public Language: Selected Poems 1975-95 (Shearsman Books, 2006), Bird Migration in the 21st Century (Spectacular Diseases, 2006), Songbook (Shearsman Books, 2009), the novel Futures (Reality Street, 1998) and the prose work Nostalgia for Unknown Cities (Reality Street, 2007). A book of short narratives, Down With Beauty, is in progress. He has been editor/publisher of the small press Reality Street since 1993. He lives with his partner Elaine in Hastings, on the south coast of England: Epilogue: In the House of Exile.
Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne in 1949. He moved to England in 2006 and now lives in Faversham, Kent. Recent poetry books are Crab & Winkle (Exeter, Shearsman, 2009), Compared to What: Selected Poems 1971-2003, (Shearsman, 2005) and The Passenger, (University of Queensland Press, 2006). His translations of The Epigrams of Martial have just been republished in the USA (Boston, Pressed Wafer, 2010). A blog is online at graveneymarsh.blogspot.com: Angles.
Catherine Hales grew up by the Thames between Windsor and Staines and has lived in Germany since 1990. Her poetry and translations have been published in many print and online magazines in the UK, the US and Europe, and she is an organiser of the Berlin ‚Poetry Hearings‘ festival. Her pamphlet out of mind appeared in 2006. Her first full collection, hazard or fall, and a book of translations, Berlin Fresco. Selected Poems of Norbert Hummelt, were published by Shearsman Books in 2010, as was her pamphlet, a bestiary of so[nne][r]ts by Oystercatcher Press. She lives in Berlin: Three poems.
Shelby Matthews was brought up in Britain but now lives in Belgium. Her work has appeared in New Tonal Language 4packs (Reality Street), Foil, defining poetry 1985-2000 (Etruscan), The Gig and How2: Border Dispute.
Kent MacCarter studied writing at University of Chicago and University of Melbourne. An expatriate of various places in Minnesota, Montana and New Mexico, he is now a permanent resident in Melbourne, Australia. Answering the question, „Where are you from?“ is always a difficult one for him. His first collection of poetry, In the Hungry Middle of Here, was published by Transit Lounge Press in 2009: The Burmese Option.
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), and Hey Kidz, Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People (Soft Skull, 2004). Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and works with young women in Cambodia on independent media projects when she’s not traveling the globe lecturing on freedom of speech issues. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia was recently featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, and Print magazines, and on GritTV and NPR’s Worldview: Toward an Understanding of the Expat.
Marcus Slease is a native of Portadown, N. Ireland. He is a nomadic poet. His book, Godzenie (Blazevox, June 2009), is the first published book of his wanderings. As a member of The Lucifer Poetics Group in 2005, he participated in group performances in North Carolina, Washington DC, Brooklyn, Ithaca, Atlanta and Philadelphia. He was a coeditor of a special issue of Past Simple on innovative British and Irish poetry (February 2009) and is working with the Polish poet Grzegorz Wroblewski on a special issue of innovative Turkish and Polish poetry for Past Simple 9. Currently, he lives in Ankara,Turkey and teaches world poetry and academic writing at Middle East Technical University: Two poems.
These poems are from Jim Goar’s most recent book, Seoul Bus Poems (Reality Street). This book was written in Seoul, South Korea, 2004-07. While most of the poems began on a bus, one began in Bangkok and others in rooms between Yonsei University and Bongwon-sa. Goar edits the online journal, past simple: Two poems.
Tony Baker was born in south London in 1954 on J.S.Bach’s birthday. He studied piano and composition and completed a PhD on William Carlos Williams at Durham University. He has worked mainly as a musician and ecologist and has written a book on the history of mycology and co-authored another on creative work with autistic children. He has collaborated widely with people working across the arts – dancers, musicians, painters, poets – and is especially drawn to improvised performance. From 1980 to 1989 he edited and published Figs. His writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and been translated into French and Czech. He lives in France amongst the vineyards near Angers: Two Places.
Matvei Yankelevich is the author of Boris by the Sea (Octopus Books) and The Present Work (Palm Press). His writing has appeared in Action Yes!, Boston Review, Damn the Caesars, Fence, Open City, Tantalum, Typo, and Zen Monster. His translations from Russian have cropped up in Calque, Circumference, Harpers, New American Writing, Poetry, and the New Yorker and in anthologies, including OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (Northwestern) and Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG). He teaches at Hunter College, Columbia University School of the Arts, and Bard College. At Ugly Duckling Presse, he is the editor of the Eastern European Poets Series, and co-editor of 6×6. He lives in Brooklyn: Two poems.
David Miller was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1950, and has lived in London since 1972. His recent publications include The Waters of Marah (Shearsman Books, 2005), The Dorothy and Benno Stories (Reality Street Editions, 2005), and In the Shop of Nothing: New and Selected Poems (Harbor Mountain Press, 2007). He has compiled British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000: A History and Bibliography of ‘Little Magazines’ (with Richard Price, The British Library, 2006) and edited The Lariat and Other Writings by Jaime de Angulo (Counterpoint, 2009). His next collection, Spiritual Letters (Series 1-5), will be appearing from Chax Press in late 2010: Spiritual Letters (Series 5, #5).
Jaki McCarrick is a graduate of Middlesex University and Trinity College, Dublin. She has published poetry in Poetry Ireland Review, Revival, Boyne Berries, Cathach, Word on the Street, Pedestal Magazine, Stylus (Australia), Southword, Ouroboros Review. Her first play, The Mushroom Pickers, won the 2005 Scottish Drama Association’s National Playwriting Competition, and premiered at the Southwark Playhouse in London in May 2006 and in New York in February 2009. Her play, Leopoldville, won the 2010 PapaTango New Writing Award and was staged at the Tristan Bates Theatre to critical acclaim. She was selected for the 2009 Poetry Ireland Introduction series of emerging poets: Three poems.
Louis Armand is a Prague-based writer and visual artist, whose literary and critical writings have been widely published in journals such as Ctheory, Triquarterly and Culture Machine. His recent books include Literate Technologies (2005), Event States: Discourse, Time, Mediality (2007), Solicitations: Essays on Criticism and Culture (2005); and Incendiary Devices: Discourses of the Other (2006). His collections of poetry and fiction include Land Partition (2001), Inexorable Weather (2001), The Garden (2001), Malice in Underland (2003), Strange Attractors (2003) and Menudo (2005). He edited Contemporary Poetics (Northwestern UP, 2007) and The Return of Kral Majales: Prague’s International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010 (Charles UP, 2010): Four poems.
Kristina Müntzing is a visual artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She has a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Since 2001 she has been living and working in many different countries, among others Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul and Tallin. The circumstances of her itinerant lifestyle has always been reflected in her artistic practice, dealing with questions of belonging, ethnicity, and loss of orientation. Her main project is all about constructing ‚home‘ as an inner, mental phenomenon, in a manner similar to the way the Jewish diaspora may talk of ‚Jerusalem‘ as a concept separate from the physical location of that city, and, as such, always present. More information can be found at kristinamuntzing.com. New Swedes.
