Ilya Kaminsky | |
---|---|
Native name | Ілля Камінський |
Born | Odesa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) | April 18, 1977
Language | English, Russian |
Citizenship | American |
Alma mater | |
Genre | Poetry |
Spouse | Katie Farris |
Ilya Kaminsky [lower-alpha 1] (born April 18, 1977) is a poet, critic, translator and professor. He is best known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odesa and Deaf Republic, which have earned him several awards.
In 2019, the BBC named Kaminsky among "12 Artists who changed the world". [1]
Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) on April 18, 1977, to a Jewish family. [2] He became hard of hearing at the age of four due to mumps. [2] He began to write poetry as a teenager in Odesa. [3] His family was granted asylum to live in the United States in 1993 due to antisemitism in Ukraine, and settled in Rochester, New York. [4] He started to write poems in English in 1994. [5]
Kaminsky is the author of critically acclaimed collections of poetry, Dancing in Odesa (2004) and Deaf Republic (2019). Both books were written in English, Kaminsky's second language. [6]
Over the years, Kaminsky has also become known for his passionate advocacy of translation of international literature in the United States. A long time poetry editor at Words Without Borders, [7] and Poetry International, [8] he has also edited several anthologies of poetry from around the world, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (HarperCollins), [9] which is widely used in classrooms all over the country. He has also founded and edited Poets in the World, a book series [10] which is dedicated to publishing compilations of poetry from around the globe, including places such as Iraq, China, Eastern Europe, South America, and elsewhere.[ citation needed ] He has also edited and translated several collections of poetry from Ukraine.
Kaminsky has worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center. More recently, he worked pro-bono as the Court Appointed Special Advocate for Orphaned Children in Southern California. [11] Currently, he is a professor at Princeton and lives in New Jersey.[ citation needed ]
Writing for The New Yorker , Kevin Young calls Deaf Republic "a contemporary epic. Evident throughout is a profound imagination, matched only by the poet's ability to create a republic of conscience that is ultimately ours, too" [12]
In The New York Times, Parul Sehgal says: "I was stunned by Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic, lyric poems presented as a play in two acts, set in a country in crisis, inspired both by Odesa, where Kaminsky grew up, and America, where he now lives. It's a book about censorship, political apathy, torture — "the nakedness / of the whole nation" — but also about tomato sandwiches, the birth of a daughter and the sudden, almost shocking joys of longtime married life." [13]
In The Guardian, Fiona Benson says: "I fell hard for Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic. Part folklore, fable, war story and love poem, it imagines an occupied town falling deaf in response to the shooting of a child. Often devastating, always humane, this is a book of the century, let alone this year." [14]
Washington Examiner calls Deaf Republic "a contemporary masterpiece. This book is proof that in 2019 great poetry can enjoy tremendous popularity." [15]
About Kaminsky's first book, Dancing in Odesa, Robert Pinsky writes: "Passionate, daring to laugh and weep, direct yet unexpected, Ilya Kaminsky's poetry has a glorious tilt and scope." [16]
Best Book of the Year
Deaf Republic was listed as The New York Times Notable Book [28] and was called Best Book of the Year by numerous publications, including NPR, [35] The Washington Post , [36] The New York Times Book Review , [37] Times Literary Supplement , [38] Publishers Weekly , [38] Financial Times , [39] The Guardian , [40] [41] Irish Times , [42] Library Journal , [43] The Daily Telegraph , [44] New Statesman , [45] Slate, [46] Vanity Fair , [47] Literary Hub, [48] Huffington Post , [49] the New York Public Library, [50] and American Library Association. [51]
Kaminsky is best known for his poetry collections, Dancing in Odesa (2004) and Deaf Republic (2019). He is also known for his work in literary translation, his anthologies of international poetry and his literary essays.
Anthologies editor
Book series edited
Poets in the World, a Book Series Edited by Ilya Kaminsky [10]
In 2018, Kaminsky published in The New York Times Magazine a widely discussed lyric essay about deafness and his return to Odesa, Ukraine, after many years away. [92]
He also writes essays on various subjects such as borders, creative life in the age of surveillance, and poetics of Paul Celan, for publications such as The Guardian , The New York Times , and Poetry . [93] [94] [95]
Poems
Essays
Patricia Fargnoli was an American poet and psychotherapist. She was the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from December 2006 to March 2009.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an American poet and essayist. She currently serves as poetry editor of Sierra Magazine and as professor of English in the University of Mississippi's MFA program, where she previously was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence in 2016-17. She has also taught at the Kundiman Retreat for Asian American writers. Nezhukumatathil draws upon her Filipina and Malayali Indian background to give her perspective on love, loss, and land. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her husband, Dustin Parsons, and their two sons.
Peter Balakian is an American poet, prose writer, and scholar. He is the author of many books including the 2016 Pulitzer prize winning book of poems Ozone Journal, the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand award in 1998 and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times best seller. Both prose books were New York Times Notable Books. Since 1980 he has taught at Colgate University where he is the Donald M and Constance H Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English and Director of Creative Writing.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Joan Houlihan is an American poet. She is the author of six books, most recently It Isn't a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest, winner of the 2021 Julia Ward Howe Award. Her other books are Shadow-feast, described by the Los Angeles Review as "...a tour de force sheared of excess, breathtaking in its leaps, and thrilling in its sonic resonances"; The Us described by Lucie Brock-Broido as: "...like nothing I have ever read or seen...wildly hewn, classically construed and skewed by an imagined lexicon....both syntactically inventive and radically simple"; Ay, the sequel to The Us, described by Ilya Kaminsky as "breathtakingly inventive and yet deeply humane...a narrative and song at once; it is talismanic"; The Mending Worm, winner of the 2005 Green Rose Prize in Poetry, and Hand-Held Executions: Poems & Essays which includes her series of essays on contemporary American poetry called The Boston Comment. The essays drew a great deal of attention for their criticism of both traditional and what she termed "post-avant" poetry, occasioning responses from Fred Moramarco of Poetry International and a wide range of letters from the poetry community both favorable and critical
Kevin D. Prufer is an American poet, novelist, academic, editor, and essayist. He is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.
Jane Hirshfield is an American poet, essayist, and translator, known as 'one of American poetry's central spokespersons for the biosphere' and recognized as 'among the modern masters,' 'writing some of the most important poetry in the world today.' A 2019 elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, her books include numerous award-winning collections of her own poems, collections of essays, and edited and co-translated volumes of world writers from the deep past. Widely published in global newspapers and literary journals, her work has been translated into over fifteen languages.
Scott Clifford Cairns is an American poet, memoirist, librettist, and essayist.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
Geoffrey Brock is an American poet and translator. Since 2006 he has taught creative writing and literary translation at the University of Arkansas, where he is Distinguished Professor of English.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He works as an Assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, where he currently lives and writes.
Ellen Doré Watson is an American poet, translator and teacher.
Tupelo Press is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1999. It produced its first titles in 2001, publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Originally located in Dorset, Vermont, the press has since moved to North Adams, Massachusetts.
Joy Katz is an American poet who was awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.
Mariela Griffor, is a poet, editor, publisher of Marick Press and diplomat. She is author of four poetry collections, Exiliana, House, The Psychiatrist and most recently, Declassified, and has had her poems and translations published in many literary journals and magazines including Poetry International, Washington Square Review, Texas Poetry Review, and Éditions d'art Le Sabord, in anthologies including Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry, from New Issues Press. A variety of Griffor's poems has been translated into Italian, French, Chinese, Swedish, and Spanish. She has been nominated to the Griffin Poetry Prize, to the Whiting Awards and the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. She was finalist and shortlisted for the 2017 National Translation Award for Canto General by Pablo Neruda.
Katie Farris is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, academic and editor. Her memoir in poems Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, was shortlisted for 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Major poetry related events which took place worldwide during 2019 are outlined below under different sections. This includes poetry books released during the year in different languages, major literary awards, poetry festivals and events, besides anniversaries and deaths of renowned poets etc. Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Polina Barskova is a Russian poet. She was born in Leningrad. Although her biological father was poet Evgeny Rein, she was raised by her adoptive father, scholar Yuri Barskov, and bears his surname. Her first book appeared when she was still a teenager. At the age of 20, she left Russia to pursue a PhD at University of California, Berkeley. She taught Russian literature at Hampshire College, and is now a professor at U.C. Berkeley.
Deaf Republic: Poems is a poetry book by Ilya Kaminsky which was published on June 18, 2019 by Faber and Faber.