Big Bridge #15, Spring 2011 - Bios S

Bios S - Z

Angelos Sakkis was born in Pireus, Greece. He studied design at the Athens Technological Institute and, afterwards, worked for a time as an assistant to the painter Spyros Vassiliou collecting materials for a monograph on Vassiliou's work, which was published 1969. Sakkis immigrated to U.S 1970 and got his BFA San Francisco Art Institute in 1989. His work has been shown in one-man and group shows and is in collections in both Greece and California. Working alongside John Sakkis, he has translated the work of poet/multimedia artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis. He currently lives in Oakland, California.

John Sakkis is the author of RUDE GIRL (BlazeVOX Books, 2009). Recent chapbooks include Rave On! (Lew Gallery, 2010) and Gary Gygax (Cy Gist Press, 2008). Recent work has appeared Little Red Leaves, MONDO BUMMER, Peacock Online Review and Big Bell. He is the translator of Siarita Kouka’s sequence Benthos (Silas Press, 2004). With Angelos Sakkis he translates the work of Athenian multimedia artist/poet Demothenes Agrafiotis, their translation of Agrafiotis’s Chinese Notebook was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2010 as well as Maribor by The Post-Apollo Press in 2009.

Anthony Seidman is the author of several collections, including On Carbon-Dating Hunger (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2000) and Combustions (March Street Press, 2008). He has just completed a third artist's book with French artist Jean-Claude Loubieres, entitled The Motel Insomnia (AdeLeo Editions, Paris), and he has recent poems and translations published widely in such journals and publications as Hunger, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Poetry International, Rhino, The Bitter Oleander, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Beyond Baroque, Hofstra Hispanic Review, etc., as well as in the anthologies Corresponding Voices (Syracuse University Press / Point of Contact), Barco a vapor transatlantico (University of Mexico City), The Great American Poetry Show (Muse Media) and in the cultural supplements to La Jornada the major newspaper of Mexico, and La Prensa of Managua, Nicaragua.

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of four collections of poetry: The Prince’s Brief Career, (Cairn Mountain Press, 1995), Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock, (Doghouse, 2004) Vortex (Doghouse, 2005), and Petit Mal, (Revival Press, 2009). He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. Under his mother’s maiden surname, as Jack Brae Curtingstall, he is a blog poet and member of The Metaphysical Club. latearrivalonearth@eircom.net

Mati Shemoelof – Israeli poet, editor, journalist and activist. Much of Shemoelof’s literary work and activism deals with issues of ethnicity and class among Mizrahi Jews in Israel.

Michael Shorb's work reflects an abiding interest in environmental issues, history, and the lyrical form, as well as a strong focus on material that reflects the dazzling Hydra of the 'real world.' His poems have appeared in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Queen's Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Commonweal, Rattle, Urthona, and European Judaism.

Shane Signorino took a long and winding road to his education. He holds 3 BAs: 1 in Experimental Psychology, 1 in English & Poetry Writing, and 1 in Theatre Acting. He also finished half of an MFA in Acting at Penn State, but realized the place was a David Koresh type cult, and thus he split. Currently, he is in the MA Poetry Writing program at SIUE, with the goal of developing a hybrid poetry coalescing guttural street speak with elevated language. He will also be acting all over St. Louis as well. And finally, he hopes to realize his dream of being a drunk circus clown.

Inma Lopez Silva

Katherine Silver has translated the works of many Spanish and Latin American authors, including Antonio Skármeta, José Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Martín Adán (NEA award), Pedro Lemebel, and Jorge Franco. For her translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness, she received the 2008 NCBA Translation Award. She has translated plays, screenplays, and a wide assortment of academic and other nonfiction books. She also works as an editor and publishing consultant/manager, and lives in Berkeley, California.

Jeffrey Skoblow was born in new york city in 1955 and grew up on long island, moved to baltimore in 1976, los angeles in 1981, and edwardsville in 1987. He has published two books (one on william morris, one on robert burns) and various articles, a few poems and a couple of short stories. what else you wanna know?

David St-Lascaux is a poet, diarist and author of e*sequiturs (www.esequiturs.com), ergodic infornography, and prose poems L’Oubliette, or Plan A and Petit Soubresaut de Mon Cœur (My Little Heartbreak), online at Interrupting Infinity (www.davidstlascaux.com), where NY Flaneur, his online diary, and Third Party Poetry, invitational poems by littérateurs not St.-L, including Jason Price Everett, Daniel Tobin, Joseph Walsh and Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, reside. Photo by Gabriella Radujko, © 2010.

Photo by James Graham Hardie St. Martin was a master translator. His influence was felt by such notables as Robert Bly, James Wright and W.S. Merwin. In his long and distinguished career as an editor and translator, Hardie translated work by Pablo Neruda, Vincente Aleixandre, Roque Dalton, Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, and Luisa Valenzuela, among others. He was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 1965, and a P.E.N. International Translation Award and an ALTA award for excellence in editing and translation. His anthology of Spanish poetry, Roots and Wings, (Harper & Row) is still considered a literary landmark. The unpublished selection of Juan Gelman’s work, which he edited and translated, is a labor of love, and the finest rendering of this great poet to date. Hardie died in Barcelona on September 3, 2007

M. K. Stallings is a poet, author, educator, and activist. MK is the founder of Urban Artist Alliance for Child Development, Inc (UAACD), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the social and cultural well-being of young people through arts and education. He holds a Master's in Sociology (University of Missouri- St. Louis) and is the author of AfroScribe, out May 2009.
mkstallings.com

Daniel Suffian says: I'm not an established poet and so I can't claim any particular style, school or singular influence, but I think these poems have a lot of beat influence. Poetic Diversity previously published my piece, "Swimming with cripples."

Anxos Sumai

Brian Unger is a surfer, an editor of Zen Monster, lives on the Jersey Shore, and studied Zen at San Francisco Zen Center with Philip Whalen, among others. He studies American Literature with Ammiel Alcalay at The City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City.

Ryan G. Van Cleave is the author UNPLUGGED: MY JOURNEY INTO THE DARK WORLD OF VIDEO GAME ADDICTION (HCI, 2010) as well as 15 other books. He teaches writing at the Ringling College of Art + Design and serves as Executive Director of C&R Press.

David Vichnar (b. 1983) is the author of Joyce Against Theory (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2010) and co-editor, with Louis Armand, of Hypermedia Joyce (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2010), a collection of essays based on the ten volumes of issues of Hypermedia Joyce Studies, an online journal of Joycean scholarship he has edited over the past 4 years. He is currently enrolled in the PhD programme at Charles University, Prague, working on his thesis focusing on the genealogies of the 20th-century anglophone experimental fiction.

Miro Villar

George Wallace is the author of 19 chapbooks of poetry, editor of Poetrybay.com and adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan. He is 2011 writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

Joe Wetteroth is the son of two Catholic school teachers and the grandson of a bartender and washing machine repairman. He writes with a St. Louis, MO group known as Get Born, and listens to records at an extremely low volume so as to not disturb his sleeping or studying girlfriend. His karmic tax is working at a late-night diner serving the wreckage of every possible subculture.

Erin Wiles hails from Ohio, where she got useless degrees in English and French while helping JKPublishing--a homegrown, independant publisher of handmade books--get on its feet and prosper. In 2006 she moved to Saint Louis, where she became marginally employed, started her own publishing division of JKP called the Saint Louis Projects, and had the pleasure to meet and perform with STL’s finest spoken word artists. She is co-editor of Bad Shoe, STL's only lit mag dedicated to the work of local women. She has written 2 chapbooks: Fractals (2008) and I & Apocalypse (2006), both available from JKPublishing.

Yasuhiro Yotsumoto was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. He started writing poetry in his late teens and published his first collection of poetry “A Laughing Bug” in 1991. Since then 7 collections of his poetry were published including ”Muddy Calender” (Co-authored with Inuo Taguchi, 2008), “Starboard of My Wife” (2006), “Golden Hour” (2004). He won several awards such as Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and his poems have been translated into more than 10 languages including two books of Romanian and Serbian translations.
In addition to poetry, Yasuhiro writes essays, literary criticism, and translates poetry from English or German to Japanese. His latest book of translation will be “Kid” by Simon Armitage to be published in Japan later this year.
He is also active in editorial works: since 2006, Yasuhiro has been National Editor of Poetry International Web – Japan, introducing the contemporary Japanese poetry through English translations. (http://japan.poetryinternational.org/). He has also recently taken part in the launch of a new poetry magazine “Beagle” in Japan as an editor.
Yasuhiro is an avid street photographer, whose works can be seen in the following web gallery: http://web.mac.com/yyotsumoto/iWeb/Site/Bosnia.html

Bill Zavatsky grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Manhattan since 1965. He has published two books of poems, most recently Where X Marks the Spot. His co-translation (with Zack Rogow) of Earthlight: Poems by André Breton, won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. His co-translation of The Poems of A.O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud (with Ron Padgett) was republished in 2008 by Black Widow Press. His most recent anthology appearance is in Seriously Funny, an anthology of humorous poetry edited by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby. Bill’s “Elegy” for Bill Evans appeared on the sleeve of the You Must Believe in Spring album, and is included in the reissue CD. For the pianist Marc Copland, Bill has written twelve poems to serve as liner notes for twelve CDs, the most recent being a solo recording, Alone. He has been awarded grants in poetry from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Twice he has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and in 2008 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He teaches English in the high school at the Trinity School in Manhattan.

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	Angelos Sakkis was born in Pireus, Greece. He studied design at the Athens Technological Institute and, afterwards, worked for a time as an assistant to the painter Spyros Vassiliou collecting materials for a monograph on Vassiliou's work, which was published 1969. Sakkis immigrated to U.S 1970 and got his BFA San Francisco Art Institute in 1989. His work has been shown in one-man and group shows and is in collections in both Greece and California. Working alongside John Sakkis, he has translated the work of poet/multimedia artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis. He currently lives in Oakland, California.

	John Sakkis is the author of RUDE GIRL (BlazeVOX Books, 2009). Recent chapbooks include Rave On! (Lew Gallery, 2010) and Gary Gygax (Cy Gist Press, 2008). Recent work has appeared Little Red Leaves, MONDO BUMMER, Peacock Online Review and Big Bell. He is the translator of Siarita Kouka’s sequence Benthos (Silas Press, 2004). With Angelos Sakkis he translates the work of Athenian multimedia artist/poet Demothenes Agrafiotis, their translation of Agrafiotis’s Chinese Notebook was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2010 as well as Maribor by The Post-Apollo Press in 2009.

	Anthony Seidman is the author of several collections, including On Carbon-Dating Hunger (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2000) and Combustions (March Street Press, 2008). He has just completed a third artist's book with French artist Jean-Claude Loubieres, entitled The Motel Insomnia (AdeLeo Editions, Paris), and he has recent poems and translations published widely in such journals and publications as Hunger, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Poetry International, Rhino, The Bitter Oleander, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Beyond Baroque, Hofstra Hispanic Review, etc., as well as in the anthologies Corresponding Voices (Syracuse University Press / Point of Contact), Barco a vapor transatlantico (University of Mexico City), The Great American Poetry Show (Muse Media) and in the cultural supplements to La Jornada the major newspaper of Mexico, and La Prensa of Managua, Nicaragua.

	John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of four collections of poetry: The Prince’s Brief Career, (Cairn Mountain Press, 1995), Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock, (Doghouse, 2004) Vortex (Doghouse, 2005), and Petit Mal, (Revival Press, 2009). He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. Under his mother’s maiden surname, as Jack Brae Curtingstall, he is a blog poet and member of The Metaphysical Club. latearrivalonearth@eircom.net

	Mati Shemoelof – Israeli poet, editor, journalist and activist. Much of Shemoelof’s literary work and activism deals with issues of ethnicity and class among Mizrahi Jews in Israel.

	Michael Shorb's work reflects an abiding interest in environmental issues, history, and the lyrical form, as well as a strong focus on material that reflects the dazzling Hydra of the 'real world.' His poems have appeared in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Queen's Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Commonweal, Rattle, Urthona, and European Judaism.

	Shane Signorino took a long and winding road to his education. He holds 3 BAs: 1 in Experimental Psychology, 1 in English & Poetry Writing, and 1 in Theatre Acting. He also finished half of an MFA in Acting at Penn State, but realized the place was a David Koresh type cult, and thus he split. Currently, he is in the MA Poetry Writing program at SIUE, with the goal of developing a hybrid poetry coalescing guttural street speak with elevated language. He will also be acting all over St. Louis as well. And finally, he hopes to realize his dream of being a drunk circus clown.

	Inma Lopez Silva

	Katherine Silver has translated the works of many Spanish and Latin American authors, including Antonio Skármeta, José Emilio Pacheco, Elena Poniatowska, Martín Adán (NEA award), Pedro Lemebel, and Jorge Franco. For her translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness, she received the 2008 NCBA Translation Award. She has translated plays, screenplays, and a wide assortment of academic and other nonfiction books. She also works as an editor and publishing consultant/manager, and lives in Berkeley, California.

	Jeffrey Skoblow was born in new york city in 1955 and grew up on long island, moved to baltimore in 1976, los angeles in 1981, and edwardsville in 1987. He has published two books (one on william morris, one on robert burns) and various articles, a few poems and a couple of short stories. what else you wanna know?

	David St-Lascaux is a poet, diarist and author of esequiturs* (www.esequiturs.com), ergodic infornography, and prose poems L’Oubliette, or Plan A and Petit Soubresaut de Mon Cœur (My Little Heartbreak), online at Interrupting Infinity (www.davidstlascaux.com), where NY Flaneur, his online diary, and Third Party Poetry, invitational poems by littérateurs not St.-L, including Jason Price Everett, Daniel Tobin, Joseph Walsh and Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, reside. Photo by Gabriella Radujko, © 2010.

Photo by James Graham	Hardie St. Martin was a master translator. His influence was felt by such notables as Robert Bly, James Wright and W.S. Merwin. In his long and distinguished career as an editor and translator, Hardie translated work by Pablo Neruda, Vincente Aleixandre, Roque Dalton, Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, and Luisa Valenzuela, among others. He was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 1965, and a P.E.N. International Translation Award and an ALTA award for excellence in editing and translation. His anthology of Spanish poetry, Roots and Wings, (Harper & Row) is still considered a literary landmark. The unpublished selection of Juan Gelman’s work, which he edited and translated, is a labor of love, and the finest rendering of this great poet to date. Hardie died in Barcelona on September 3, 2007

	M. K. Stallings is a poet, author, educator, and activist. MK is the founder of Urban Artist Alliance for Child Development, Inc (UAACD), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enhance the social and cultural well-being of young people through arts and education. He holds a Master's in Sociology (University of Missouri- St. Louis) and is the author of AfroScribe, out May 2009. mkstallings.com

	Daniel Suffian says: I'm not an established poet and so I can't claim any particular style, school or singular influence, but I think these poems have a lot of beat influence. Poetic Diversity previously published my piece, "Swimming with cripples."

	Anxos Sumai

	Brian Unger is a surfer, an editor of Zen Monster, lives on the Jersey Shore, and studied Zen at San Francisco Zen Center with Philip Whalen, among others. He studies American Literature with Ammiel Alcalay at The City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City.

	Ryan G. Van Cleave is the author UNPLUGGED: MY JOURNEY INTO THE DARK WORLD OF VIDEO GAME ADDICTION (HCI, 2010) as well as 15 other books. He teaches writing at the Ringling College of Art + Design and serves as Executive Director of C&R Press.

	David Vichnar (b. 1983) is the author of Joyce Against Theory (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2010) and co-editor, with Louis Armand, of Hypermedia Joyce (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2010), a collection of essays based on the ten volumes of issues of Hypermedia Joyce Studies, an online journal of Joycean scholarship he has edited over the past 4 years. He is currently enrolled in the PhD programme at Charles University, Prague, working on his thesis focusing on the genealogies of the 20th-century anglophone experimental fiction.

	Miro Villar

	George Wallace is the author of 19 chapbooks of poetry, editor of Poetrybay.com and adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan. He is 2011 writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.

	Joe Wetteroth is the son of two Catholic school teachers and the grandson of a bartender and washing machine repairman. He writes with a St. Louis, MO group known as Get Born, and listens to records at an extremely low volume so as to not disturb his sleeping or studying girlfriend. His karmic tax is working at a late-night diner serving the wreckage of every possible subculture.

	Erin Wiles hails from Ohio, where she got useless degrees in English and French while helping JKPublishing--a homegrown, independant publisher of handmade books--get on its feet and prosper. In 2006 she moved to Saint Louis, where she became marginally employed, started her own publishing division of JKP called the Saint Louis Projects, and had the pleasure to meet and perform with STL’s finest spoken word artists. She is co-editor of Bad Shoe, STL's only lit mag dedicated to the work of local women. She has written 2 chapbooks: Fractals (2008) and I & Apocalypse (2006), both available from JKPublishing.

	Yasuhiro Yotsumoto was born in Osaka, Japan in 1959 and grew up mostly in Hiroshima. He started writing poetry in his late teens and published his first collection of poetry “A Laughing Bug” in 1991. Since then 7 collections of his poetry were published including ”Muddy Calender” (Co-authored with Inuo Taguchi, 2008), “Starboard of My Wife” (2006), “Golden Hour” (2004). He won several awards such as Hagiwara Sakutaro Award and his poems have been translated into more than 10 languages including two books of Romanian and Serbian translations. In addition to poetry, Yasuhiro writes essays, literary criticism, and translates poetry from English or German to Japanese. His latest book of translation will be “Kid” by Simon Armitage to be published in Japan later this year. He is also active in editorial works: since 2006, Yasuhiro has been National Editor of Poetry International Web – Japan, introducing the contemporary Japanese poetry through English translations. (http://japan.poetryinternational.org/). He has also recently taken part in the launch of a new poetry magazine “Beagle” in Japan as an editor. Yasuhiro is an avid street photographer, whose works can be seen in the following web gallery: http://web.mac.com/yyotsumoto/iWeb/Site/Bosnia.html

	Bill Zavatsky grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Manhattan since 1965. He has published two books of poems, most recently Where X Marks the Spot. His co-translation (with Zack Rogow) of Earthlight: Poems by André Breton, won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. His co-translation of The Poems of A.O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud (with Ron Padgett) was republished in 2008 by Black Widow Press. His most recent anthology appearance is in Seriously Funny, an anthology of humorous poetry edited by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby. Bill’s “Elegy” for Bill Evans appeared on the sleeve of the You Must Believe in Spring album, and is included in the reissue CD. For the pianist Marc Copland, Bill has written twelve poems to serve as liner notes for twelve CDs, the most recent being a solo recording, Alone. He has been awarded grants in poetry from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Twice he has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and in 2008 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He teaches English in the high school at the Trinity School in Manhattan.

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