Anselm Hollo

Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo (born April 12, 1934) is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived most of his life in the United States.

Life and work

Anselm Hollo was born in Finland. His father, Juho Aukusti Hollo` [ [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jahollo.htm www.kirjasto.sci.fi] Biography of his father, accessed 13 May 2008] (1885–1967) — who liked to be (and was usually) known as "J.A." Hollo — was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, an essayist, and a major translator of literature into Finnish. His mother was Iris Antonina Anna Walden, a music teacher and daughter of organic chemist Paul Walden. He lived for eight years in the United Kingdom and has been a permanent resident in the United States since the late 1960s. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife, artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo.

He has published more than forty titles of poetry in the UK and in the US, in a style strongly influenced by the American beat poets. His work has appeared in many anthologies, including "" (1969), "British Poetry since 1945" and Jon Silkin's "Poetry of the Committed Individual" (1973). He has received many awards, including NEA and Poets Foundation fellowships, and the San Francisco Poetry Center Award for the best book of poems published in 2001, "Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000".

In 1965, he performed at the "underground" International Poetry Incarnation, London. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo POETICS list elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate", in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins to the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Hollo has translated poetry and belles-lettres from Finnish, German, Swedish and French into English. In 2004, he won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

He has taught creative writing in eighteen different institutions of higher learning, including SUNY Buffalo, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 1989, he has taught in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he now holds the rank of Full Professor.

Poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley named their son Anselm Berrigan after Hollo.

Selected Publications

*"Maya" (1970)
*"Alembic" (1972)
*"Sojourner Microcosms: New & Selected Poems 1959–1977" (1977) (ISBN 0-912652-39-X)
*"Finite Continued" (1980) (ISBN 0-912652-68-3)
*"Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: Selected Poems 1965–2000" (2000)

ee also

*The Czar's Madman

Notes and references

External links

* [http://www.corpse.org/archives/issue_10/broken_news/hollo.html The Anti-Laureate Announcement]
* [http://samizdateditions.com/issue3/hollo1.html Poems online] at Samizdat (poetry magazine)