DEBORAH SACKS read English at New College, Oxford and has been studying versification at the Poetry School in London.
WENDY SALOMAN lives in London with her husband, a ceramic sculptor. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and later as a mature student read History of Ideas at Middlesex Polytechnic, finally opting out to follow her own course of education. Her work has appeared in various little magazines, and part of a long prose poem was included in an anthology of prose poetry, A Curious Architecture (Stride, 1996). Her first collected poems, Syllables and Leaves, was published by Poetry Salzburg/Salzburg UP in 1998.
FIONA SAMPSON has published fourteen books - poetry, philosophy of language and books on the writing process - of which the most recent are The Distance Between Us (Seren, 2005), Writing: Self and Reflexivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), and Common Prayer (Carcanet, 2007). Her awards include the Newdigate Prize; 'Trumpeldor Beach' was short-listed for the 2006 Forward prize; and she has been widely translated, with eight books in translation, including Travel Diary, awarded the 2003 Zlaten Prsten in Macedonia. She contributes to The Guardian, The Irish Times and other publications; she is the editor of Poetry Review.
JORDAN SANDERSON is a PhD student at The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in Red River Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Wavelength: Poems in Prose and Verse and Watershed.
KAARLO SARKIA (1902-1945) is at times noted as Apollo of Finnish poetry, although he published only four poetic collections during his short lifetime. An admired lyricist with a perfect sense of language, he was also recognized as a distinguished translator of a wide spectrum of French and also Italian poetry from that period.
NIKOS SARRIS was born in 1944 on Paros and educated in Athens. Married with three children, he directs Paros' largest foreign language Phrontisterion. He has translated all of Archilochos into Modern Greek, and the Odes of Kalvos and the Collected Poems of Elytis into English. He also directs the Archilochos chorus of Paros.
GEOFF SAWERS and PETE HAY both lived by the Thames in Reading for many years. Together they have produced a number of books and pamphlets, including The Ancient Boundary of Reading, A Ladder for Mr. Oscar Wilde, and an edition of Rimbaud's The Drunken Boat (all from Two Rivers Press, 1995-99). They are currently working on A Thames Bestiary.
M. A. SCHAFFNER has poems recently published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Fine Madness, The Hollins Critic, The Formalist, Orbis (UK), Imago (Australia), and Poetry Wales. Schaffner's first collection, The Good Opinion of Squirrels, published by Word Works, won the Washington Writer's Center publication prize and the Columbia Book Award.
EGON SCHIELE was born in 1890 in Tulln, near Vienna. In 1909 he founded the Neukunstgruppe (New Art Group). From about 1910 to 1915 he also wrote poems. After his first solo exhibition in 1911 Schiele began developing the Expressionist style - vibrant colours, angular structures, often melancholy moods - which characterises his paintings, graphic work and poems. Living openly with Edith Harms (whom he married in 1915), and painting many young women and girls estranged him from the local community. Having just achieved recognition and material success, he died of Spanish 'flu in 1918.
ROBERT SCHINDEL was born in 1944 in Bad Hall, Upper Austria. His Jewish Communist parents were arrested for working with the anti-fascist resistance and deported to Auschwitz. His mother survived, his father was murdered in Dachau. Robert Schindel survived under wrong name in a Nazi children's home. He was active in the 1968 student movement and was founder of the "Kommune Wien". He lives in Vienna as a librarian and book dealer. Works: Ohneland (1986), Gebürtig (1992), Gott schütze uns vor den guten Menschen (1995), Mein liebster Feind (2004).
E. M. SCHORB's poetry collection, Murderer's Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue UP. His novel, Paradise Square, won the grand prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation at the Frankfurt Book Fair. His collection, A Fable and Other Prose Poems, is forthcoming from Argonne Press. His poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Frank, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere.
Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvannia, in 1958, GERALD SCHWARTZ is the author of Only Others Are (LEGIBLE books, 2003). He lives in West Irondequoit, New York.
GEORGIA SCOTT is a poet and scholar. Her most recent poetry publications are The Good Wife (Salzburg: Poetry Salzburg, 2001, 2nd ed. 2002), The Penny Bride (Salzburg: Poetry Salzburg, 2004), and Dreams of Fires: 100 Polish Poems 1970-1989 (Salzburg: Poetry Salzburg, 2004) with David Malcolm. Georgia Scott is the pseudonym of Cheryl Alexander Malcolm, Associate Professor of English at the University of Gdansk in Poland. Her other publications include books on Jean Rhys and Anita Brookner. Read more about Georgia Scott on our homepage.
MAURICE SCULLY was born in Dublin in 1952. Books include: 5 Freedoms of Movement (Galloping Dog Press, 1987), The Basic Colours (Pig Press, 1994), and Steps (Reality Street, 1998). The five books of Livelihood are due to appear from Wild Honey Press as a single volume in 2003. "TIG" is from the concluding book in a trilogy, of which Livelihood is the middle volume.
GAVIN SELERIE, born in London, where he still lives. He was formerly a lecturer at Birkbeck College. His books include Azimuth (Binnacle, 1984), Roxy (1996) and, with Alan Halsey, Days of '49 (1999, both West House). The poems included here are from Le Fanu's Ghost (to be published by Five Seasons). This is a Gothic work which combines poetry, prose and graphics.
IGOR SEVERYANIN (1887-1941) is almost unknown in the West, yet in Russia he is considered an important, though controversial, figure. He was well-thought of by his gifted contemporaries, and at a gathering in Moscow in 1918 he was crowned 'King of the Poets', leaving Mayakovski in second place. But he didn't appear to reciprocate such respect, for in 1934 he published Medallions, a set of 100 sonnets dedicated to individual poets and composers, the tone of which ranges from a certain degree of respect to mockery, sarcasm and downright derision. All the examples in this book are from this collection. Tsvetaeva called him 'a poet graced by God', but his poem to her is particularly vicious, and Pasternak fares little better. Severyanin led the splinter-group known as the Ego-Futurists.
MOHAMMAD-REZA SHAFI-I-KADKANI, known as Sereshk, was born in 1939 in Kadkan near Neishapur, Iran. His poems, reflecting Iran's social conditions during the 1940s and 1950s, are replete with memorable images and ironies. He has authored eight collections of poetry, eight books of research and criticism, two book-length translations from Arabic, one on Islamic mysticism from English. He has also published three scholarly editions of classical Persian literature. He is a professor of Persian literature at Tehran University.
MICHAEL SHCHERBA lives in Kazakhstan.
M. P. A. SHEAFFER is a Professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. A member of the Poetry Society of America and the American Academy of Poets, she has edited four anthologies of poetry and has authored Moonrocks and Metaphysical Turnips (2nd ed., Oct. 2000) and Lacquer Birds and Leaves of Brass. A third volume, Paths, was also published in England in 2000.
AMY SHEARER was born and raised in the northeast suburbs of London by American parents. She studied English and German for her BA, Jewish History and Culture for her MA, and is currently writing her doctorate the University of Vienna on early Austrian cinema and turn-of-the-century Austrian art. She's been living in Vienna for two years and works part-time as a journalist and fiction editor.
ROBERT SHEPPARD is the author of Twentieth Century Blues, a long intranet of texts published (in part) as Empty Diaries (Stride, 1998), The Lores (Reality Street, 2003), and Tin Pan Arcadia (Salt, 2004). Other work includes Turns, with Scott Thurston (Ship of Fools/Radiator, 2004). He has written two volumes of criticism, The Poetry of Saying (Liverpool UP, 2005) and a monograph on Iain Sinclair. He is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University.
MICHAEL SHORB has lived in California most of his life. His poems have appeared in over 150 magazines, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, Rain City Review, Shakespeare Newsletter, Commonweal, Religious Humanism, Shoofly, Beatitude, and European Judaism.
JOHN SIDDIQUE is the author of The Prize (Rialto, 2005), Poems from a Northern Soul (Crocus Books, 2007), Don't Wear It on Your Head - Poems for Young People (Peepal Tree, 2006), editor of Transparency (Crocus Books, 2005) and co-author of Four Fathers (ROUTE, 2006.) He gives readings, mentors and teaches creative writing in the UK and abroad.
JEFFREY SIDE has had poetry published in over 30 magazines including Poethia, nthposition, eratio, Ancient Heart, Blazevox, P.F.S. Post, hutt, and ken*again. He was the assistant editor of The Argotist (1996-2000). He now runs The Argotist Online website.
ANGELUS SILESIUS (1624-77) was born Johannes Scheffler to a Lutheran family in Breslau. He studied medicine at Strasburg, Leiden and Padua before being appointed court physician to the Duke of Öls. Influenced by the example of Abraham von Franckenberg and deeply attached to the traditions of German mysticism, Scheffler became increasingly dissatisfied with orthodox Lutheran doctrine and converted to Catholicism in 1653, adopting the name of Angelus Silesius (the Silesian Angel). His collection of epigrams, the Cherubinischer Wandersmann (The Cherubinic Traveller) appeared in 1657. Neglected for almost two centuries, Silesius is today considered as one of Germany's major religious poets.
IAIN SINCLAIR lives, works and walks in East London. His novels include White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (Goldmark, 1987) and Downriver (Paladin, 1991). Psychogeographical expeditions have thrown up Lights Out for the Territory (Granta, 1998) and London Orbital, Walk around the M25 (Granta, 2002). Poetry, including Lud Heat (Albion Village Press, 1975), has been a private matter, fugitive presses and modest runs. Autobiographical material - reliable as Ford Madox Ford - can be found in a book-length interview with Kevin Jackson: The Verbals (Worple Press, 2003).
PETER SINCLARE was born in 1949 and attended Leeds University, where he took a degree in Fine Arts / English. He started writing poetry when he was 29. Much of his early poetry was published in magazines such as Great Works. He is also a painter.
AMRITJIT SINGH, Professor of English at Rhode Island College, has authored or edited over a dozen books on American and Indian literatures. Most recently, he has co-edited, with Peter Schmidt, Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Literature (UP of Mississippi, 2000) and, with Daniel M. Scott, The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman (Rutgers UP, 2003).
JEFFERY SKEATE's poems have been published in Orbis, zimmerzine, Indefinite Space, Albatross, Abbey, Small Brushes, and elsewhere. He lives in Decorah, Iowa.
K. V. SKENE's latest publications include Only a Dragon and Calendar of Rain, winners of the 2002 and 2004 Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award and published by Micro Prose (Canada). A chapbook, Edith (a series of poems on Nurse Edith Cavell), was recently published by Flarestack (UK). A manuscript, Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect, is due from Hidden Brooke (Canada) in 2006. A long-term expatriate Canadian, K. V. Skene now lives in Oxford.
MARIE SLAIGHT. Originally from Montreal, she has spent the last years living between Montreal, New Orleans and Buenos Aires. She has written and acted for both film and theatre, ran a gallery-theater in Montreal and taught acting in New Orleans, Montreal and Buenos Aires. Her poetry has been published in American Writing, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Visions International, The Plaza and Abiko Quarterly (Japan) and Poetcrit (India), among others.
ANDREW SLATTERY is a Communications graduate from Newcastle University, Australia. His poems have appeared in Centoria, Opus, Quadrant and in The Best Australian Poems of 2004. Love and Other Ways to Pass the Time was published by Arrangement Media (Newcastle, Australia) in 2003. His latest collection Stroll Data was published in December 2004, also by Arrangement Media. He was awarded the Harri Jones Memorial Poetry Prize, previously awarded to Anthony Lawrence and B. R. Dionysus. He lives in the Hunter Valley, down river from Les Murray.
BARBARA SMITH lives in Ireland, with her six children and partner. She graduated with a BA (Hons) in Literature last year and is completing an MA in Creative Writing in Queen's University, Belfast, in 2008. Her debut collection, Kairos, was published in 2007 by Doghouse.
JOAN SMITH has taught and translated from the Russian language, under her professional name of Joan Pemberton, for many years. She has also worked for record companies such as EMI, Conifer Records and Deutsche Grammophon, translating the complete song cycles of Tchichovsky, Mussorgsky and others.
MARCUS ROBERT SMITH's poetry has appeared internationally in a variety of journals, including Acumen, Envoi, Orbis, Confrontation, The Greensboro Review, HQ, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. Born in England, he now lives in San Francisco.
MICHAEL SMITH was born in Dublin in 1942. He is founder/editor of New Writers' Press. As a literary critic and polemicist he has been largely responsible for rehabilitating into the canon of Irish poetry the work of Thomas MacGreevy, Denis Devlin, Brian Coffey and others. His Selected Poems (Melmoth) appeared in 1985 and Lost Genealogies & Other Poems (New Writers' Press) in 1993. In print also are his translations of Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernández, Francisco de Quevedo and Luis de Góngora.
SIMON SMITH. Born 1961, and since 1991 has been Assistant Librarian at the Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall. His pamphlets are: North Star (Poetical Histories, 1992); LEXICON (Form Books, 1993); Night Shift (Prest Roots Press, 1994); Juicy Fruit (Gratton Street Irregulars, 1999). Waterloo Press published Fifteen Exits in 2001, his first full-length book. More recent work has appeared as Reverdy Road, a whole issue of the journal Painted, Spoken edited by Richard Price, and at Peter Philpott's Great Works web site: Household Gods, a sixty-six page e-book: http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/HG/SS1.html.
DAMIAN SMYTH was born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, in 1962. A first collection, Downpatrick Races (Lagan Press), appeared in 2000. A stage play, Soldiers of the Queen, was played at the Belfast Festival at Queen's in 2002 and published in 2003. A second play, The Chieftain's Daughters, is due for production in London in early 2008. His most recent collection is The Down Recorder (Lagan Press, 2004). He is Literature Officer with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
GERARD SMYTH was born in Dublin in 1951. He has contributed poetry to magazines such as Agenda, Poetry Review, Other Poetry, The Denver Quarterly, Cyphers, The Salmon, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Krino, and The Honest Ulsterman. His collections are World without End (New Writers, 1977), Loss and Gain (Raven Arts, 1981), Painting the Pink Roses Black (1986), Daytime Sleeper (2002), A New Tenancy (all Dedalus, 2004).
DARIUS VICTOR SNIECKUS is currently completing a collection of original poems under the working title Translations. His work has appeared in various American, Canadian and UK literary and academic journals. He has also published a sequence of ekphrastic poems, The Brueghel Desk (Pneuma Press, 1994), in chapbook form. Born in Canada, he lives in Bath, England.
ANDRÉE SODENKAMP was born in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Belgium and died at the age of 97. She only started writing poetry in her fifties. Selected titles: Sainte terre (1954), Les Dieux obscurs (1958), Femmes des longs matins (1965), La fête debout (1973), C’est au feu que je pardonne (1976), Choix (1980), C’était une nuit comme une autre (1991), Poèmes choisis (1998).
PAUL SOHAR was born in Hungary and educated in the US. His work has appeared in numerous journals. His latest volume of poetry is Homing Poems, published by Iniquity Press in 2005. He is also the author of a non-fiction book about the Hungarian Gulag, documented by Faludy's prison poems (Synergebooks, 2006).
MICHAEL T. SOPER, born in 1946, is a printer by trade, and a contract administrator for the US government. He translates from Chinese and Portuguese, classical and modern poems. His interest in Camoes stems from the study of early Portuguese involvement in India and Asia, and he recently completed Xavier Wakes, a collection of lyric and narrative free verse. He is currently translating the Lydia poems of Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa) to contrast them to the Ricardao-Lydia story of Jose Saramago's novel.
W. MAURICE SPRAGUE was born in San Francisco in 1973. He has a college education with degrees in Anthropology, History and German Studies, with a specialization in Medieval Studies. He has lived in the United States and Germany, and currently resides in Salzburg, Austria. This is his first poetry publication in a literary journal.
GEOFFREY SQUIRES was born in 1942 and grew up in Co. Donegal, Ireland. He has lived and worked in a number of countries and currently teaches at the University of Hull, England. His main publications are Drowned Stones (New Writers Press, 1975), Figures (Ulsterman Publications, 1978), XXI Poems (Menard Press, 1980), Poem in Three Sections (Irish University Review, 1983 / Form Books, 1997), Landscapes and Silences (New Writers' Press, 1996) and Poem for Two Voices (The Journal 1, 1998).
BENJAMIN STAINTON lives and writes in rural Suffolk. He works as a photographer and occasionally performs music in public. He has had poems published in numerous magazines, and is working hard on a second collection. His first, The Jealousies & Isabelle, is currently under scrutiny from publishers.
DEREK STANFORD, an octogenarian whose poetry has enjoyed a late flowering: The Memorare Sequence (Poetry Salzburg, 1997), The Purgatory & Paradise of Aubrey Beardsley (Typographeum Bookshop, 1999). His critical anthology Three Poets of the Rhymers' Club: Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, John Davidson (1974) is to be republished by Carcanet Press. An unorthodox Catholic he has a devotion to "Lady St. Mary". His Muse is the poet Julie Whitby.
ANNE STEVENSON is an Anglo-American poet, born to American parents in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States and educated at the University of Michigan. After graduating with honours, she returned to the UK where she has lived for most of her life. Stevenson was the inaugural winner of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award in 2002. In 2007 she received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and the Neglected Master's Award from the Poetry Foundation of America. Her latest collection of poetry is Stone Milk (Bloodaxe, 2007).
GERRY STEWART was born in the United States and moved to Scotland ten years ago. She has worked as Assistant Editor at Chapman Publishing and Writer in Residence for North Ayr. Currently she teaches creative writing around Scotland and is looking for a publisher for her first poetry collection.
JACK STEWART was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University (where he received his doctorate). From 1992-95 he was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The American Literary Review, The Dark Horse, and The Southern Humanities Review. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife and two daughters and teaches at the Fort Worth Country Day.
WILL STONE, born in 1966, is a poet and translator living in Suffolk. His critical work has been published in The TLS, The Guardian, PN Review, and Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in The Wolf, THE SHOp, The London Magazine, and Agenda. His first collection, Glaciation, was published by Salt in 2007. To The Silenced: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl was published by Arc in 2005. His translations of the Belgian Symbolist poets Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach will also appear from Arc in 2009.
AUGUST STRAMM was born in 1874, and died in battle in Galicia, in 1915. Although most of his experimental, Expressionist poetry was published after his death, Herwarth Walden published his major work during WWI. Also a playwright (one of his plays was made into an opera by Paul Hindemith), painter and cellist, Stramm is best known as a poet whose advanced style is reminiscent of Ernst Jandl. Like him, he stretched the boundaries of language whilst retaining a strong emotional impact. Stramm is now well-known enough to have over 1700 entries on the Internet.
PAUL STUBBS was born in Norwich, where he now lives. He has written adaptations of two classical Greek plays, Euripides' The Bacchae and Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, and also a radio play, The Messiah. Flambard published his first collection, The Theological Museum, in 2005. A second collection is due from Arc Publications in late 2007.
VIRGIL SUÁREZ was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. His poetry collections include Palm Crows (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Banyan (LSU Press, 2001), and Guide to the Blue Tongue (University of Illinois Press, 2001). He is the co-editor of the anthologies American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement (2001) and Like Thunder: Poets Respond of Violence in America (both University of Iowa Press, 2002). He is the recipient of an NEA grant for poetry. He divides his time between Key Biscayne and Tallahassee where he lives with his wife and daughters and teaches as full professor at The Florida State University.
RAY SUCCRE is a poet and playwright living on the southern Oregon coast. He has been published in Nthposition, Art Times, and in Posse Review.
MARIO SUSKO, a witness and survivor of the war in Bosnia, lives in the U.S.A. since 1993, where he is an Associate Professor at Nassau Community College. He is widely known as an editor and translator of major American writers, including Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others. His most recent work includes his selected poems 1982-2002 Reading Life and Death (Zagreb: Meandar, 2003), and his fourth book of poems in English Eternity on Hold (New York: Turtle Point Press, 2005).
JANET SUTHERLAND's work has appeared recently in Stride, Shadowtrain, Great Works, Poetry Review, and Shearsman. A collection, Burning the Heartwood, came out from Shearsman in 2006.
GEORGE SZIRTES was born in Budapest in 1948. His parents left as refugees in 1956 and he was brought up in England where he has lived since. His first book of poems, The Slant Door (Secker & Warburg, 1979), was joint-winner of The Faber Prize. His dozen books since then have won a variety of prizes and awards, the last, Reel (Bloodaxe, 2004), being awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize. His New and Collected Poems will be published by Bloodaxe in 2008 (the US edition by Sheep's Meadow) together with a book-length study of his work, Reading George Szirtes, by John Sears. He is also a translator of books of poetry and fiction from Hungarian. He is currently Reader in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.