ILSE AICHINGER (born 1921 in Vienna) is an Austrian writer, who is noted for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry. She spent her childhood in Linz and Vienna. Aichinger began to study medicine in 1945, working as a writer on the side. In her first novel, Das vierte Tor (The Fourth Gate), she writes of her own experience under Nazism. It marked the first time a woman's experience in concentration camps was discussed in Austrian literature. After studying for five semesters, Aichinger interrupted her studies in Medicine again in 1948 in order to finish her second novel, Die größere Hoffnung (The Greater Hope). In 1953, she married the German writer Günter Eich. In 1963, Aichinger moved to Großgmain near Salzburg. After 1985 Aichinger increasingly retreated from public life. In 1995 she received the Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis für Literatur and in 2001 the Joseph-Breitbach-Preis, along with W. G. Sebald and Markus Werner. Available in English translation: Selected Poetry and Prose (Logbridge-Rhodes, 1983).
RIZWAN AKHTAR was born 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. He is a Lecturer in English and Related Literatures at the University of Punjab, Lahore.
HARRISON ALECHENU AKOH, was born in Kaduna state, Northern Nigeria, in 1973. Currently he studies Journalism at the London School of Journalism. This is his first published poem.
KAZIM ALI is a poet, painter, and performance artist based outside of New York City. His poems have been published in many leading American journals, and on-line at the Poetry Daily website (www.poetrydaily.org). His artwork and dance/performance pieces have been exhibited and performed around New York State and the country. Before becoming a writer-in-residence at the Just Buffalo Literary Center in Buffalo, NY, he was a political organizer and served a term as the National President of the United States Student Association (www.usstudents.org) and was on the National Preparatory Committee of the World Youth Festival held in Havana, Cuba in summer of 1997. The longer poem that appears in this issue is part of a score for a multi-media performance piece.
GARY ALLEN was born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. He has travelled and worked throughout Europe, settling for some years in Holland. Two full-length collections of poetry: Languages (Flambard / Black Mountain, 2002) and Exile (Black Mountain, 2004). A third collection, North of Nowhere, will be published this autumn by Black Mountain Press.
MAUREEN ALSOP's poems have appeared in various publications including Words and Images, Poetry Motel, and Taproot. She completed her PhD in psychology from James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. She now lives in Palm Springs, California.
PAUL AMLEHN is a writer, vocalist, photographer, and filmmaker, based in Auckland, New Zealand.
DARRAN ANDERSON is a 24-year-old writer from Derry in the North of Ireland. He has had work published in Deaddrunkdublin, Hard Luck Magazine (USA) and Culture Northern Ireland. He is currently working on a novel entitled "First We Take Jerusalem" and is putting the finishing touches to a collection of poems and short stories entitled "The Kamikaze Handbook".
MARTIN ANDERSON lives in London after many years in Asia. He is a visiting Senior Lecturer with the Department of English & Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. His most recent poetry collection is Black Confetti (University of the Philippines Press, 1999). Fascicles 1 & 2 of "The Hoplite Journals" appeared in Shearsman 50 (available on-line at www.shearsman.com); Fascicle 3 in Oasis 107 (2002); Fascicle 4 in PSR 4 (2003).
D. J. ANDREW was born in 1939 near Manchester and now lives in Leeds. In the 1960s he had some work published in magazines, including Ambit. After retiring from the Civil Service, he took a degree in Philosophy. Recently, work has been published in The Rialto and Iota.
ARLENE ANG lives in a small town outside Venice, Italy. Her poetry has appeared in FRiGG, Orbis, The Pedestal, Poetry Ireland, Rattle, Smiths Knoll and Tattoo Highway. She is the author of The Desecration of Doves (iUniverse, 2005).
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE (1880-1918). Born in Rome of an Italian father and a Polish mother. He grew up and received his education in France. He was among the first to properly appreciate artists such as Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Derain who, in the early years of the twentieth century, were innovating in modern painting. His essay Picasso, peintre appeared as early as 1905. In 1914, at the outbreak of war, he enlisted, serving first in the artillery and later in the infantry. In May 1916 he received a head injury during combat for which he had to be trepanned. When he returned to Paris in 1917 he arranged the first performance of his "surrealist drama" - Les Mamelles de Tirésias. In November 1918, he died of Spanish influenza. Apollinaire was the author of a variety of different texts: prose fiction, drama, librettos etc., yet it could be argued that he published only two significant works during his lifetime: Alcools: Poèmes 1898-1913 (1913) and Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre 1913-1916 (1918).
ARCHILOCHOS the Parian (ca. 680 - ca. 645 BCE) was one of the earliest Greek poets, and the first we know of to speak in his own voice. His known writings consist of elegies, hymns, and songs in iambic, trochaic, and mixed metres. Later Greek critics, who ranked him below Homer only, thought he invented iambic, which he used for satire and invective. His poems stayed popular through all antiquity, but only fragments survive.
LOUIS ARMAND is an artist and writer living in Prague. His reviews, critical essays, poetry, fiction and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is editor of the literary broadsheet Semtext (plastic), a member of the editorial board of Rhizomes: Studies in Cultural Knowledge, and poetry editor of The Prague Revue. His publications include: Strange Attractors (2003), The Garden (both Salt, 2001), Land Partition (Melbourne: Textbase, 2001), Inexorable Weather (Arc, 2001), Base Materialism (New York: x-poezie, 2001), Synopticon with John Kinsella (Florida: Mudlark, 2000), Anatomy Lessons (New York: x-poezie, 1999), Erosions (Sydney: Vagabond, 1999) and Seances (Prague: Twisted Spoon, 1998).
KEITH ARMSTRONG. Born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community development worker, poet, librarian and publisher. He now lives in the seaside town of Whitley Bay and is coordinator of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East of England.
MICHAEL ARMSTRONG (1923-2000) was an outstanding poet and painter. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1923. He attended Sedbergh School 1938-41 and served in the army from 1942-47: fought in the Mountains of Italy 1944-45; then in Palestine and Egypt from 1945-47 as an instructor in the Army Education Corps. Later worked as a librarian in Newcastle and then in London. He moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1957, where he and his Indian wife ran a small hotel and opened Jersey's first Indian Restaurant in 1959. Mai Zetterling, David Hughes, Lawrence and Gerald Durrell ate there. In the 'sixties he was on the mammal staff at Gerald Durrell's Jersey Zoo. He also had exhibitions of his paintings at the Jersey Arts Centre and at the Jersey Museum, where he was for a time Chairman of the Barreau Arts Committee. In the early 'seventies his Andium Press published books by young poets and painters, including Leslie Norris, Jim Burns, Jeremy Reed (his first book) and Martin Booth. Some of his war poems were published in More Poems of the Second World War (Dent's Everyman Series) and his poem "The Meadow" was included in a Penguin anthology of War Poems. His long poem Memories from Underwater was published by Cloud in 1996. It was highly praised by Peter Russell, Kathleen Raine, Jim Burns and Jeremy Reed and favourably reviewed by William Cookson in Agenda. In December 1997 the University of Salzburg published his Collected Poems 1961-1996. Three groups of Michael's poems were set to music by the composer William Alwyn and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Another series was set to music by Madeleine Dring in 1982. An interview with Michael was published in W. Görtschacher's Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene (Poetry Salzburg, 2000).
TAMMY ARMSTRONG is a Canadian poet. Her first poetry collection, Bogman's Music (2001), was nominated for the Governor General's Award, her second collection Unravel was published in 2004 (both Anvil).
HANS ARP (1887-1966). French sculptor, painter and poet. He was a founder of the Dadaist school of artists in Zurich in 1916. The Dada movement, a precursor to surrealism, was the result of the founders’ disenchantment with the state of society. They were particularly enraged at the persisting war and chose to ridicule art, a reflection of their civilization. The Dadaists used techniques that went against all established art theory. Although collages were most frequent, Dada art also extended into poetry and photomontages. Once the movement ended in 1923, Arp worked with the surrealists.
MARCIA ARRIETA has been published widely in the small press throughout the years. Recent contributions include tinfish, So to Speak, gestalten, xtant, Heaven Bone, 88, Score, Abraxas, American Writing. Her chapbook experimental: was published last year by potes + poets press (CT). She has edited & published the poetry journal Indefinite Space for eleven years.