Contributors' Notes

Maria Attanasio was born in Caltagirone, Italy, in 1943, where she still lives, writes, and teaches philosophy. Attanasio is the author of five collections of poetry and four works of historical fiction. Her latest work, Il Falsario di Caltagirone, was the recipient of the prestigious Premio Vittorini. Her books of poetry are Interni (Interiors) (Milano: Guanda 1979), Nero barocco nero (Black Baroque Black) (Caltanissetta: Sciascia 1985), Eros e mente (Eros and Mind) (Milano: La Vita Felice 1996), Ludica mente (Ludic Mind, or Ludically) (Roma: Avagliano 2000), Amnesia del movimento delle nuvole (Amnesia of the Movement of the Clouds) (Milano: La Vita Felice 2003). Her works in prose include Correva l'anno 1698 e nella citta' avvenne il fatto memorabile (It Was the Year 1698 and in the City the Memorable Fact Occurred) (Palermo: Sellerio 1994) and Di Concetta e le sue donne (Of Concetta and Her Women) (Palermo: Sellerio 1999).

Patrick Barron is assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and coeditor and cotranslator of Italian Environmental Literature: An Anthology. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Award, the Rome Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the translation of the poetry of Andrea Zanzotto. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared in many journals, including Poetry East, Ecopoetics, Two Lines, The Worcester Review, and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry.

Carla Billitteri, born and educated in Italy, teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Maine. Her translations of contemporary Italian poetry have appeared in Boundary2, How2, and Fascicle, among other journals. A selection of her translations of Alda Merini’s aphorisms is forthcoming with Hooke Press.

Gherardo Bortolotti was born in 1972. In 2005 he published the e-book Canopo (Cepollaro E-dizioni). In 2007, he published Soluzioni binarie (La Camera Verde) and the wee chap tracce per dusie, 103-197 for dusie.org. With Michele Zaffarano he edits the series Chapbooks. He is the author of blogs in Italian (canopo.splinder.com e bgmole) and in English (Low Level Techniques, How to Write). He is among the founders and curators of the blog of translations and experimental literature at gammm.org.

Brandon Brown is a poet and translator from Kansas City. His poems have appeared recently in journals edited by his friends, such as Both Both, Capilano Review, War and Peace, Minor American, and Mirage/(Period)ical. His friends at Cy Press published a chapbook, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, in 2006. He gets to live in San Francisco, California with Alli Warren!

Nanni Cagnone was born in Liguria in 1939 and lives in Bomarzo. He studied philosophy and has worked as a journalist, art critic, editor and publisher, creative director for advertising agencies, consultant for "company image," and lecturer of aesthetics. His most recent poetry books include Doveri dell’esilio (2002) and Index Vacuus (2004). His recent novels and short stories include Pacific Time (2001) and Ça mérite un detour (2007). He has translated works by Aeschylus and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Jennifer Chapis is the author of the chapbook The Beekeeper’s Departure (Backwards City Press 2007) and a limited-edition broadside, "Poem as Tossed Salad" (Center for Book Arts 2002). Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, DIAGRAM, Hotel America, McSweeney’s, Barrow Street, Quarterly West, The Best New Poets anthology series, and other publications. Her work was recently recognized with the Florida Review Editor’s Prize, the GSU Review Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart nomination. She is an editor with Nightboat Books and lives in San Diego, California, with her husband.

Allison Cobb is the author of Born Two (Chax Press 2004) and Cell (Portable Press 2004). She was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kate Colby is the author of Fruitlands (Litmus Press 2006) and Unbecoming Behavior (Ugly Duckling Presse 2008). Recent work can be found in Bay Poetics, New American Writing and Vanitas. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Jen Coleman lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works for Environmental Defense. She is co-editor of the poetry journal PomPom. Her work can also be found at EAOGH and here. She had the honor of participating in the 2007 "Ten Jens" reading, hosted by Aaron Belz at the Schlafly Bottleworks in St. Louis.

Joshua Corey is the author of two full-length books, Selah and Fourier Series, and two chapbooks, Compos(t)ition Marble and Hope & Anchor, forthcoming from Noemi Press. He is Assistant Professor of English at Lake Forest College and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. He has published over 100 poems in various journals, and his first fulllength collection, Chopstix Numbers, is now available from Ahsahta Press.

Biswamit Dwibedy was born and raised in India and resides in Iowa City, Iowa. He attends the MFA Writing program at Bard College. The poems appearing in this issue are from his first collection, Ozalid, forthcoming from 1913 Press.

Chiara Daino (born in 1981) is a songwriter, novelist and actress. Her first novel, La Merca, edited by Massimo Sannelli, was published by Fara in 2006.

kari edwards (1954-2006) received New Langton Art’s Bay Area Award in literature (2002). edwards is author of obedience (Factory School, 2005), iduna (O Books, 2003), a day in the life of p. (subpress collective, 2002), a diary of lies – Belladonna #27 (Belladonna Books, 2002), and post/(pink) (Scarlet Press, 2000). edwards’ work can also be found in Scribner’s The Best American Poetry, 2004, Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House Press, 2004), Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004), Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others (Haworth Press, Inc., 2004), Experimental Theology (Seattle Research Institute, 2003), and Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard (Painted Leaf Press, 2000).

Esse Zeta Atona is a performance poetry project developed in Rome by Laura Cingolani and Fabio Lapiana, at work since 1999. It is based on the idea of poetry as permanent research, as movement across the thresholds of the word, meaning and its loss, writing and pure improvisation. The work of Esse Zeta Atona aims to forge a moment of utopia and protest, an instance of construction of language not quashed by the codes of power and marketing.Laura Cingolani (born in 1973) and Fabio Lapiana (born in 1971) are involved in the Roman underground artistic scene. Cingolani is a writer and belongs to a musical project called Idrante (with Daniele Salvati, www.idrante.com); Lapiana (known as Atonal) is a member of an independent publishing house, Venerea Edizioni, and also works as writer, visual artist and graphic designer. Both are on the Board of the "deviant pop" magazine catastrophe.

Kathleen Fraser’s books include essays, a Breughel-inspired kid's book and 20 poem collections, collaborating with painters JoAnn Ugolini, Sam Francis, Mel Bochner, and Hermine Ford. Fraser translates and lectures in Rome each spring. Her wall texts for ii ss, with Ford's drawings, were shown at Pratt Institute of Architecture/Rome in 2007. She is recipient of a Guggenheim and two NEA fellowships. For a recent interview and photos, go to http://jacketmagazine. com/33/fraser.

Giovanna Frene, alias Sandra Bortolazzo, was born in Asolo, not far from Venice, in 1968. She has studied music and art, and is a doctoral candidate in the History of Language at the University of Padova. Her books of poetry are Immagine di voce (1999), Spostamento (2000), Datità, with an afterword by Andrea Zanzotto (2001), Stato apparente (2004), and Sara Laughs (2007); and, as Federica Marte, the cross-genre "prosimetro" Orfeo è morto (2002). Her poems have appeared in various Italian and foreign journals, and in the anthologies Parola Plurale: Sessantaquattro poeti italiani fra due secoli, (Rome, 2005) and Nuovi poeti italiani, edited by P. Zublena for the journal Nuova Corrente (2005).

Florinda Fusco, born in Bari in 1972, teaches contemporary Italian literature at the University of Bari. Her critical and poetic writings have appeared in a range of journals and anthologies in Italy, France, and Canada, including Parola Plurale (Sossella 2005), Nuovi poeti italiani (Tighler 2005), and La creatività femminile (Lieto Colle 2006). Recently she has been working on a monograph on Edoardo Cacciatore. Her first book of poems, linee, was published by Zona in 2001. Her work il libro delle madonne scure (Mazzoli 2003), illustrated by Luigi Ontani, won the Premio Delfini. Her translations from the Spanish of Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik won the national Bernard Simeone translation prize in 2004. A monograph on Amelia Rosselli and a poetic trilogy are forthcoming from Oedipus Press.

Marco Giovenale lives in Rome. His website is at http://slowforward.wordpress. com. He edits and/or contributes to bina, il manifesto, http://gammm.org, http:// poeticinvention.blogspot.com and other sites, and his poetry has appeared in a range of magazines and anthologies. His books of poems include Curvature (La camera verde 2002), Il segno meno (Manni 2003), Altre ombre (La camera verde 2004), Double click (Cantarena 2005), Criterio dei vetri (Oèdipus 2007) and La casa esposta (Le Lettere 2007). He has one e-book of prose, Endoglosse (Biagio Cepollaro E-dizioni); a chapbook of new "endoglosses" was published as Numeri primi (Arcipelago 2006). Translations and "sought poems" from Baudelaire make up the book Spleen / Macchinazioni per fiori, with images by Alfredo Anzellini (La camera verde 2007). A gunless tea was published for the 2007 dusi/e-chap project.

Milli Graffi, Milanese, was born in 1940. She studied Anglistics, with a focus on semiotics, linguistics, and psychoanalysis. She has produced works of sound poetry (Salnitro, Farfalla ronzar, Tralci) as well as four poetry collections - Mille graffi e venti poesie (1979), Fragili film (1987), L’amore meccanico (1994), embargo voice (2006) - and a novella titled Centimetri due (Edizioni d’If 2004). She has translated Lewis Carroll (the two Alice books and The Hunting of the Snark) and Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol). She has also taught at the University of Verona and the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo. Her research ranges from studies of nonsense and the comic function in the early avant-gardes to militant criticism aimed at understanding the situation of contemporary poetics (writing on comrades from Balestrini to Raworth, Guest to Scialoja). She is editor-in-chief of the journal Il Verri.

Stefania Heim is co-founder and co-editor of Circumference: Poetry in Translation. Her poems, criticism, and translations have recently appeared in the Boston Review, Harp & Altar, Harper's, and La Petite Zine.

erica kaufman is the author of several chapbooks, most recently censory impulse (Big Game Books), civilization day (Open24Hours), and a familiar album (winner of the 2003 New School Chapbook Contest). she is the co-curator/co-editor of Belladonna*/Belladonna Books. erica lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aby Kaupang’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse, The Laurel Review, Ruminate, Matter, and Oregon East. Her chapbook, Scenic Fences, was listed as a finalist for the Laurel Review/Greentower Press Midwest Chapbook Competition. She has also been nominated twice for the AWP Intro Journals Project and once for the Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize. Contact her at aby.cooperman@yahoo.com.

Amy King is the author of I’m the Man Who Loves You (BlazeVOX Books 2007), Antidotes for an Alibi (BlazeVOX Books 2005), and The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press 2003). She teaches Creative Writing and English at SUNY Nassau Community College, is the editor-in-chief for the literary arts journal MiPOesias [http://www.mipoesias.com], and is also a member of the Poetics List Editorial Board [http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/poetics/welcome.html]. Please visit www. amyking.org for more.

Steve Light, a basketball point-guard following upon Pete Maravich and Nate Archibald, is also a philosopher and poet whose poetry, essays, and books have appeared in the United States, Canada, Jamaica, France, Italy, Japan, England, and Australia.

Sarah Mangold lives in Seattle where she edits Bird Dog, a journal of innovative writing and art, and co-edits a small chapbook press, Flash + Card, with Maryrose Larkin. She is the author of Blood Substitutes (Potes & Poets), Household Mechanics (New Issues), Boxer Rebellion (g o n g), Picture of the Basket (Dusie e/ chap), and, most recently, Parlor (Dusie e/chap).

Giuliano Mesa, born in 1957, has published the following volumes: Schedario (Geiger 1978; Poesia italiana e-book 2005), I loro scritti (Quasar 1992), Improvviso e dopo (Anterem 1997), Quattro quaderni (Zona 2000), 1,6,7 - da Nun (La Camera Verde 2007), Da recitare nei giorni di festa (1996) (La Camera Verde 2007), and Tiresia (2000-2001) (La Camera Verde 2008).

Ruby Palmer was born in Boston in 1969 and spent her childhood in rural Pennsylvania. She received her BA from Hampshire College in 1992 and her MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2000, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 1999. Her work has been included in exhibitions in New York at Exit Art, Smack Mellon, KS Art, LMAK Projects, and Claudine, among others, as well as at Morgan Lehman Gallery, CT, and Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA. She lives with her husband and two-year-old twins in Brooklyn, New York.

Peter Constantine Pihos is a lawyer and historian who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Chris Pusateri has published poetry and prose in a number of periodicals, including American Book Review, Chicago Review, Jacket, The Poker, Verse, and others. In addition, he is the author of the e-book Berserker Alphabetics (available free at www.xpressed.org) and five chapbooks, most recently North of There (dusie 2007), Flowers in Miniature (Big Game 2006) and VI Fictions (g o n g 2006). He lives in Colorado with his partner, the poet Michelle Naka Pierce.

Michael Rancourt is a poet in the MFA Creative Writing program at San Diego State University, where he specializes in metrical verse and contrarianism.

Andrea Raos, born in 1968, has published Discendere il fiume calmo, in Quinto quaderno italiano (edited by F. Buffoni, Milano: Crocetti 1996), Aspettami, dice. Poesie 1992-2002 (Roma: Pieraldo 2003), Luna velata (Marseille: cipM - Les Comptoirs de la Nouvelle B. S. 2003) and Le api migratori (Salerno: Oèdipus - collana Liquid 2007).

Matt Reeck has translations forthcoming from the Urdu short stories and essays of SH Manto and Patras Bukhari, respectively, the former in the book Bombay Stories and the latter on the webzine eXchanges. His Hindi poetry is online at Anubhuti, and his French prose at L’être. His poetry is viewable online at Web Conjunctions and Other Rooms and in print at Upstairs at Duroc.

Evelyn Reilly’s most recent work has been published in the chapbook Fervent Remnants of Reflective Surfaces by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and can be found in Lungfull! and upcoming editions of Gam and War and Peace. Reilly’s first book, Hiatus, was published by Barrow Street Press in 2004. She has taught visual poetics at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and is co-curator of the winter segment of the Segue Reading Series. With Brenda Iijima, she is alsocurrently editing the )((eco(lang)(uage(reader)), a collection of essays on poetry and ecological ethics.

Eléna Rivera is the author of When the Shadow Filled Window Opens (WinteRed Press 2007), Mistakes, Accidents, and a Want of Liberty (Barque Press 2006) and Suggestions at Every Turn (Seeing Eye Books 2005). Her translation of Isabelle Baladine Howald’s Secrets of the Breath is forthcoming from Burning Deck.

Amelia Rosselli — poet, critic, musician, musicologist, and composer — was born in Paris in 1930. The 1937 assassination of her father Carlo, a hero of the anti- Fascist Resistance, forced her family into a series of moves between France, Switzerland, England, and the United States; she eventually settled in Rome. Her volumes of poetry in Italian include Variazioni belliche (Garzanti, 1964), Serie ospedaliera (Mondadori 1969), and Documento (Garzanti 1976); she also authored Sleep: Poems in English (Garzanti 1992), a range of poly- and intralingual works, and prose pieces gathered in Diario ottuso (Istituto Bibliografico Napoleone 1990). Dickinson and Plath were among the authors she translated. She died in 1996.

Lisa Samuels has recent poems in New American Writing, /nor, How2, and elsewhere. Her most recent poetry books are Paradise for Everyone (Shearsman 2005) and Increment (a family romance) (Bronze Skull 2006), parts of which appear in digital form as Vex Increment (www.epoetry2007.net/artists/oeuvres/samuels/ samuels.html). She lives in New Zealand and teaches at The University of Auckland.

Massimo Sannelli attended Genoa University and the Fondazione Franceschini in Florence. He has lived and worked in Genoa since 1992. His recent books of poems - a part of what calls his "second body" (that of literature - are Santa Cecilia e l’angelo (Atelier 2005), Venti sonetti (La Camera Verde 2006), and Lo schermo (Feaci 2006). He is also the author of Philologia Pauli (Fara 2006), an essay - with a little series of original poems - about Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poetical works and death.

Jennifer Scappettone is the author of Err-Residence (Bronze Skull 2007) and Beauty [Is the New Absurdity] (dusi/e kollectiv 2007), and of From Dame Quickly (forthcoming from Litmus Press). She is currently working on Venice and the Digressive Invention of the Modern, a critical study of that city as a crucible for modern and postmodern aesthetics; a cross-genre archaeology of the landfill & opera of pop-ups called Exit 43, commissioned by Atelos Press; and Locomotrix: Selected Poems of Amelia Rosselli. Her poems, prose, and translations from Italian appear in a range of journals and anthologies, including Zoland Annual 1 and 2 (Random House 2006 and 2007), War and Peace, Volumes II and III (O Books, 2005 and 2007), and The Best American Poetry 2004 (Scribner 2004). She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing and associate faculty of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.

Kate Schapira lives, writes, and teaches in Rhode Island. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Denver Quarterly, Coconut, Ecopoetics, Cordite, and Word for/ Word, among other places. She curates Publicly Complex, a reading series of innovative and challenging work by not-yet-famous writers, and is the author of a chapbook, Phoenix Memory (horse less press).

Kyle Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Ontario Review and The Washington Post.

Sébastien Smirou is the author of Simon aime Anna (rup&rud 1998), Mon Laurent (P.O.L 2003), and Ma girafe (Contrat maint 2006). He founded and directed the poetry cooperative rup&rud; during its seven years, the association published micro-editions by Anne Parian, Anne Portugal, Caroline Dubois, Pierre Alferi, Peter Gizzi, and Éric Houser. He has translated texts by Kevin Davies, Peter Gizzi, Harryette Mullen, and Andrew Zawacki. He lives in Paris, France.

Pia Tafdrup was born in Copenhagen in 1952. She has published 13 collections of poetry, including: When an Angel Breaks Her Silence; The Crystal Forest, Queen´s Gate, The Whales in Paris, Tarkovskij's Horses and Boomerang. She has also published a statement of her poetics, Walking over the Water, a novel, Surrender, and two plays, Death in the Mountains and The Earth Is Blue. English translations of her poems have been published in more than 50 literary journals in the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Australia. Tafdrup received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1999 and the Nordic Prize in 2006 from The Swedish Academy.

Jen Tynes edits horse less press. She is the author of The End Of Rude Handles (Red Morning Press 2006), See Also Electric Light (Dancing Girl Press 2007), and, with Erika Howsare, The Ohio System (Octopus Books 2007).

Pasquale Verdicchio is a poet, translator and critic. He teaches in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He has translated the poetic works of Emilio Villa, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Antonio Porta, Alda Merini, Giorgio Caproni and Antonio Gramsci, among others. His own poetry collections include This Nothing’s Place (2008). His essays address issues of Italian culture in Italy and abroad and have been published widely in journals and in volume form.

Emilio Villa (1914-2003) is the ever-present missing link of Italian letters. Born near Milan, he lived for different periods in Florence, Milan, São Paolo and Rome. He was a quintessential man of classics and ancient languages who found himself equally at home among ancient Hebrew texts and avantgarde artists. Among his many publications are a prose translation of the Odyssey (1964). While he preferred writing in his Milanese dialect, Latin and an amalgam of linguistic inheritances and creations, he also wrote in Italian,which he seemed to dislike deeply and to which he referred as the "language of slavery" of a pompously academic "Ytaglya." His books include Oramai (1947), E ma dopo (1950), L’homme qui descend quelque. Roman métamytique (1974), Verboracula (1981) and, in English translation, the volume Foresta ultra naturam (Red Hill Press 1989). An art critic, he represents an active and incisive voice in the appreciation of avant-garde artists such as Alberto Burri.

Andrea Zanzotto is the author of more than twenty books of poems and collections of prose, which cover a vast range of themes, from linguistics and nature to politics and science. A lifelong resident of the hilly farm country of the Veneto, he possesses a rare familiarity with place, and his writings frequently explore the ongoing tensions between nature and culture in his native village, the surrounding countryside, and the nearby remnants of ancient forests. Among his many awards are the Saint Vincent Prize (1950), the Librex-Montale Prize (1983), the Stadt Münster Prize for European Poetry (1993), and the Hölderlin Prize (2005).

Andrew Zawacki is the author of two poetry books, Anabranch (Wesleyan 2004) and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia 2002), and of three chapbooks: Georgia (Katalanché 2007), co-winner of the 1913 Prize; Roche limit (Track & Field, forthcoming); and Masquerade (Vagabond 2001). Co-editor of Verse, which recently released a triple number on French poetry and poetics, he teaches at the University of Georgia.