The Persian lyric poet HAFIZ was born around 1320 in Shiraz, Iran and died there around 1390. Shams Al-Din Muhammad acquired the name Hafiz through memorizing the whole of the Qur'an at an early age. His love lyrics (ghazals) are acclaimed as the finest ever written in Persian. He has also written other forms of poetry of which samples are translated here. His poetry survives in his Divan / Diwan (collected poems). It inspired Goethe's Westöstlicher Diwan (1819).
MIRIAM HALAHMY runs creative writing workshops in North London and is a member of the Highgate Poetry Society. She has published a novel, Secret Territory (Citron Press, 1999), and two collections of poetry, Stir Crazy (Hub Editions, 1994) and Cutting Pomegranates (David Paul Press, 2003). She also writes for young people, including Peppermint Ward (Cancerbackup, 2006).
ALYSON HALLETT was brought up in Street, Somerset, and currently lives in Hartland, Devon. Landscapes and cityscapes, travel and transition are the core ingredients of her work. Her first collection, The Stone Library, was published by Peterloo Poets in September 2007.
IAIN HALLIDAY was born in Scotland but now lives in Sicily where he teaches and researches English language and translation at the University of Catania. His translations from Italian into English include: Giovanni Verga's A Mortal Sin [Una peccatrice] (Quartet, 1995); Claudio Magris's Microcosms (Harvill, 1999); Valerio Manfredi's Alexander (Macmillan, 2001-2002); Pierluigi Collina's The Rules of the Game (Macmillan, 2003).
MICHAEL HAMBURGER was born in Berlin in 1924 to a German-Jewish family that emigrated to England in 1933. He served as an infantryman from 1943-47 and read Modern Languages at Oxford. After an academic career in England and America, he settled in Suffolk. He has won many prizes and awards for his translations, including the Schlegel-Tieck prize three times, and has translated - among others - from Baudelaire, Celan, Hölderlin and Enzensberger. His acclaimed critical study The Truth of Poetry (Penguin) was published in 1969. His Collected Poems (Anvil, 1995), drawing on some twenty earlier books, has been followed by four more, most recently Wild and Wounded (Anvil, 2004). In 2004 Anvil Press also reissued his Hölderlin: Poems and Fragments and Peter Huchel: The Garden of Theophrastus. He died in 2007.
Since graduating from the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 1989 SHEILA HAMILTON has lived in Hungary and Scotland and has three children. Her first pamphlet is entitled The Monster in the Rose Garden (Flarestack, 2001). She has had poems published in The Rialto and Poetry London, among others. Poetry Salzburg published her first collection, Corridors of Babel, in 2007.
EMMA HARDING is 28 and lives in London, where she is a radio producer for the BBC. Her poems have previously been published in Acumen, Orbis, Mslexia and Iota.
ALAN HARDY is an English language teacher and the director of a family-run English language school. He had poems published in Orbis, Poetry Nottingham, Iota, The Interpreter's House, Envoi, Poetic Licence, Poetry Monthly and other magazines. His collection Wasted Leaves was published by Aramby in 1996.
DANIEL Y. HARRIS is Adjunct Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Department of Sociology at Sonoma State University. He has been Poetry Editor of the Internet literary journal Muse Apprentice Guild. His chapbook, Unio Mystica, will be published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2007. His recent publication credits include The Pedestal Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Convergence, The Denver Quarterly, Panoply, and Shampoo. The Jewish Community Library of San Francisco, Market Street Gallery, The Euphrat Museum and The Center for Visual Arts are among his art exhibition credits.
JIM HART was raised in Brooklyn where he still resides. In the New York City Sanitation Department he served as Deputy Director of Public Affairs and Director of Correspondence for the Sanitation Police for thirty years. Recently his work as appeared in Pulsar Poetry Magazine, The Blind Man's Rainbow, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Red Owl Magazine, and Iconoclast.
LIBBY HART was born in 1971. She was the 2003 recipient of the D J O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.
JAMES HARVEY lives in London. He was born in 1966. After leaving school, he studied with the Open University, and then went to University College London to study Biology.
ROGER HARVEY is a poet, novelist and radio writer born in 1953 and living in the North of England. His published novels include Percy the Pigeon (1987), The Silver Spitfire (1991) and A Woman Who Lives by the Sea (all Ulverscroft, 1992). Poetry collections: Northman's Prayer (Soundings, 1988), Raising the Titanic (Plowman, 1994), and Divided Attention (Grevatt & Grevatt, 1998). His plays Guinevere-Jennifer and Money! Money! Money! have been on tour in England and his screenplay of Guinevere-Jennifer was filmed. His latest book Poet on the Road (Bluechrome, 2006) is the intimate travelogue of his U.S. tour.
SIOBHAN HARVEY is a writer, reviewer and lecturer based in New Zealand. She is the author of two collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, US, UK and Europe. She currently lectures and tutors Creative Writing at The University of Auckland.
SUZANNE R. HARVEY lectured for 19 years in the English Department at Stanford University in California. Upon retirement, she taught at Emeritus College in the San Francisco Bay Area for 7 years. Her poetry has appeared in Nth Position, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, SpeedPoets, and Concho River Review.
LEE HARWOOD, born 1939, lives by the sea in Brighton & Hove. A now redundant Post Office worker. Relatively recent books of poems - Morning Light (Slow Dancer Press, 1998); In the Mists: Mountain Poems (Slow Dancer Press, 1993); Rope Boy to the Rescue (North and South, 1988); Crossing the Frozen River: Selected Poems (Paladin, 1988).
ALAMGIR HASHMI is Pakistan's premier English-language poet. He has been writing poetry for the last forty years. Equally well-known as author of several scholarly books, he has been Professor of English and Comparative Literature in Pakistan, Europe and the United States.
PAUL HENRY was born in Aberystwyth in 1959 and currently lives in Gwent. In 1989 he received an Eric Gregory Award. He is the author of six collections of verse, the most recent of which is Ingrid's Husband (Seren, 2007). He has guest-edited Poetry Wales and is a popular Creative Writing tutor. He currently presents the Inspired series of arts programmes for BBC Radio Wales.
AMY MARIE HESS is 23 years old and lives in the smallest town of West Virginia. Her poetry has appeared recently in The Taj Mahal Review, Down in the Dirt, and Feelings of the Heart.
GRAHAM HIGH is a poet, painter and sculptor based in South East London. He also works as a sculptor/effects designer for the film industry and is currently working on the forthcoming Dark Materials trilogy based on the Philip Pullman novels. He edits Blithe Spirit, the Journal of the British Haiku Society, and runs a small poetry publishing outfit, RAM Publications. His latest collection of poetry, Wolf on the Third Floor (New Hope International, 2000), contains poetry written in Russia where he lived for some time.
JEFF HILSON teaches Creative Writing at Roehampton University. His most recent book is stretchers (Reality Street Editions, 2006). The poems in this issue are part of a longer sequence called "Birds birds", selections of which can be found online in Robert Sheppard's Pages and in issue 4 of onedit as well as in print in Skald 24 (2007). Editor of The Contemporary Free Verse Sonnet (RSE, 2006).
JEREMY HILTON was born near Manchester in 1945. He took degrees in English and Social Work. Between 1972 and 1998 he worked in various social work posts. He has published twelve collections, most recently Slipstream (Ripostes, 2003) and Lighting Up Time: Selected Poems 1991-2004 (Troubadour, 2006). Since 1995 he has edited the poetry magazine Fire.
LYNNE HJELMGAARD grew up in New York City and is presently based in London. Her first book, Manhattan Sonnets, was published by Redbeck in 2003.
CHARLES HOBDAY is the author of Edgell Rickword: A Poet at War (Carcanet, 1989) and A Golden Ring: English Poets in Florence from 1373 to the Present Day (Peter Owen, 1998), and the editor of The Collected Poems of Edgell Rickword (Carcanet, 1991). He published four collections of poems, notably How Goes the Enemy? Selected Poems 1960-2000 (Mammon Press, 2000). His long dramatic poem, Elegy for a Sergeant (Lapwing, 2002), was his final collection. He died in London on 2 March 2005.
PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s. The poems printed here are part of a larger ongoing project made for the Field Study group. He is due to read at the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry in April.
KEITH HOLYOAK, born in 1950, was raised on a dairy farm in British Columbia, Canada. He received his PhD in Psychology from Stanford University. He is now Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His poems and translations have been published in The London Magazine, Envoi, Measure, Poetry NZ, and Two Lines. In 2006 Broken Electric records released his apocalyptic poem, Descent, with instrumental punk rock music, and in 2007 his Poems of Li Bai, translations with music of the classical Chinese lute.
DANIELLE HOPE was born in Lancashire and now lives in London where she works as a doctor. She previously edited Zenos, a magazine of British and international poetry and is editorial advisor for Acumen now. She has published three collections: Fairground of Madness (1992), City Fox (2004), The Stone Ship (2004, all Rockingham Press).
TOM HUBBARD took his Ph.D. at Aberdeen University and qualified as a librarian at Strathclyde University. In 1984 he became librarian of the Scottish Poetry Library. He has taught Scottish, European and American literatures and cultures at US, mainland European, and Scottish universities. His articles, essays, reviews and poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines and books in Scotland and mainland Europe. He is currently editor of the Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation (BOSLIT). His publications include Four Fife Poets (Aberdeen UP, 1988); The New Makars (ed., Mercat Press, 1991); Seeking Mr. Hyde (Peter Lang, 1995); The Integrative Vision: Poetry and the Visual Arts in Baudelaire, Rilke and MacDiarmid (1995).
RAYMOND HUMPHREYS. Born in 1947 in London of Welsh family. Lived in Wales since 1972. Numerous magazine publications: Staple, Outposts, Gaelach Lan, Westwords, Odyssey, Panurge; non-fiction including a series of twenty essays on literary biography published in Writers' Monthly and a regular review column in Cambrensis. Books: Family Walks Around Swansea (Scarthin, 1993), The Time Traveller (Porto Franco, 1997), Nietzsche's Children (Geneze, 1998), and Living Words (Porto Franco, 1998).