Anne Blonstein

Infobox Writer
name = Anne Blonstein


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birthdate = 1958
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occupation = Poet, Translator
nationality = British
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Anne Blonstein (born 1958) is a British poet and translator. She now lives in Basel, Switzerland, where she works as a freelance translator and editor.cite web | url=http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Blonstein%20interview.htm | title=Anne Blonstein interviewed by Jack Alun | publisher=The Argotist Online | accessdate=2008-08-11] She is the author of three full-length collections, "the blue pearl", "worked on screen" and "memory's morning". Forthcoming works include "the butterflies and the burnings" and "correspondence with nobody".

Blonstein is known for her poetic sequences that work with notarikon — originally a rabbinic and kabbalistic method used to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures. She is redeploying and elaborating it as a contemporary poetic procedure, engaging with diverse languages and texts, both ancient and modern.

Early life

The greatgranddaughter of Jewish immigrants to Britain at the turn of the 20th century, Anne Blonstein was born and raised in the Home Counties — first Hertfordshire, then moving with her family to Surrey when she was 11. Before leaving Britain in 1983, she spent six years in Cambridge, where she took a degree in Natural Sciences followed by a PhD in genetics and plant breeding.

Career

Blonstein lives in Basel, Switzerland, where she earns a living as a freelance translator and editor.

" [Blonstein's] terse, unusual images are the outcome of an English language that, mated to the other idioms she lives with — German, French, and Hebrew — shapes the transnational world of a language nomad. … In her most recent work, Hebrew … has become the place to which she ties her English and the other languages she uses in her life through graphic/visual and semantic associations. … For Blonstein languages, with their varieties and differences, have become the endangered species of our globalized world." -- Marina Camboni in Contemporary Women's Writing, Oxford University Press cite web | url=http://cww.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/1/1-2/34 | title=Impure Lines: Multilingualism, Hybridity, and Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary Women's Poetry. | publisher=Contemporary Women's Writing, 1:1/2 December 2007, p. 42 | accessdate=2008-08-26]

Blonstein has also collaborated on projects with other artists, including the ceramist Pat King, and the Swiss composers [http://www.meierhans.info/ Mela Meierhans] and Margrit Schenker. A recording of "Prelude and Echo," Meierhans' setting of five poems from "the blue pearl" performed by the jazz ensemble Quartet Noir, is available on [http://www.musiques-suisses.ch/shop/grammont_portrait/100.php?lang=d CD.]

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in among others, Denver Quarterly, Descant, Dusie, How2, Indiana Review and Notre Dame Review.

Bibliography

*citation | title=sand.soda.lime | publisher=Broken Boulder Press | year=2002
*citation | title=the blue pearl | publisher=Salt Publishing | year=2003 | isbn=187685765X
*citation | title=worked on screen | publisher=Poetry Salzburg Review | date=January, 2005 | isbn=3901993185
*citation | title=from eternity to personal pronoun | publisher=Gribble Press | year=2005
*citation | title=that those lips had language | publisher=Plan B Press | year=2005
*citation | title=thou shalt not kill | publisher=Dusie Wee Chap | year=2007
*citation | title=hairpin loop: poems | publisher=Bright Hill Press | date=October 30, 2007 | isbn=1892471442
*citation | title=memory's morning | publisher=Shearsman Books | date=March 15, 2008 | isbn=1905700768
*citation | title=the butterflies and the burnings | publisher=Dusie Press | year=2008
*citation | title=correspondence with nobody | publisher=ellectrique press | year=2008 | isbn=9783033016859

References

External links

Critiques & Reviews

* [http://www.squarelake.com/Five/Anne-Blonstein.htm Review of "the blue pearl" by Dennis Formento, 2004.]
* [http://www.bestwebbuys.com/Incontri_Transnazionali-ISBN_9788800203241.html?isrc=b-search "correspondence with nobody": The Experimental Writings of Anne Blonstein," Incontri Transnazionali p. 117-126, by Diana Collecott, 2005.]
* [http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2007ConfArchive/exemplarypapers_07.pdf "Notarikon: From Ancient Interpretive Procedure to Contemporary Poetic Process." The AWP Pedagogy Papers 2007, p.46, by Kathrin Schaeppi, 2007.]
* [http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2007/04/that-those-lips-had-language.html Review of "that those lips had language" by Sarah Hudgens, Apr. 2007]
* [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:r7mEW6W7_9QJ:www.geraldengland.co.uk/revs/bs040.htm+%22anne+blonstein%22&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=33&gl=ch Review of "worked on screen" by Jacqueline Karp, 2007.]
* [http://www.interimmag.org/ "Anne Blonstein’s "worked on screen": Notarikon as Poetic Interpretive Process and Intimate Involvement with the Word," Interim 24, by Kathrin Schaeppi, 2008.]

Poetry Links

* [http://www.wordforword.info/vol9/Blonstein.htm Word for Word – poems]
* [http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20C%20Vol.%2016.2-18.1/Vol%2017.0%20poetry99/Blonstein.htm Weber: The Contemporary West – poems]
* [http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19528 poets.org – poems]
* [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:lm3--tlcbPcJ:www.dusie.org/blonstein6.html+%22anne+blonstein%22&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=ch Dusie – poems]
* [http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:gU1jDeluRjQJ:www.argotistonline.co.uk/Blonstein%2520poems.htm+%22anne+blonstein%22&hl=de&ct=clnk&cd=46&gl=ch The Argotist Online – poems]