J. Kates

Poet

Fitzwilliam, NH
New Hampshire US

Author's Bio

 

 

J.  Kates  is a minor poet, a literary translator and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation and a Käpylä Translation Prize. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems: Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) and The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press) and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents). He is the translator of The Score of the Game  and An Offshoot of Sense (Tatiana Shcherbina); Say Thank You and Level with Us (Mikhail Aizenberg); When a Poet Sees a Chestnut TreeSecret Wars, and I Have Invented Nothing (Jean-Pierre Rosnay); Corinthian Copper (Regina Derieva); Live by Fire (Aleksey Porvin); Thirty-nine Rooms (Nikolai Baitov); Psalms (Genrikh Sapgir); Muddy River (Sergey Stratanovsky); Paper-thin Skin (Aigerim Tazhi) and Sixty Years (Mikhail Yeryomin). He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era.  A former president of the American Literary Translators Association, he is also the co-translator of six books of Latin American and Spanish poetry.

Publications & Prizes

Books:
The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books, 2012)
,
Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing, 2010)
,
Mappemonde (Oyster River Press, 2001)
Journals: ,
Cyphers
,
Denver Quarterly
, ,
Mississippi Review
,
PN Review
Prizes won: 

2018                        Käpylä Translation Prize (poetry, A. Tazhi) 

2017                        National Endowment for the Arts, Translation Project Fellowship (A. Tazhi)

2013                        Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation  (M. Yeryomin)

2006                        National Endowment for the Arts, Translation Project Fellowship (M. Aizenberg)

1995                        New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, individual artist fellowship (poetry) 

1984                        National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Writing Fellowship (poetry)

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Prefers to work with: 
Incarcerated individuals, Teenagers
Fluent in: 
French, Russian
Born in: 
White Plains
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: Jan 24, 2024