 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(September 2015) |
John Curl | |
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| Born | September 10, 1940 New York City |
| Alma mater | City College of New York |
John Curl (born September 10, 1940) is an American poet, memoirist, translator, author, activist and historian.
Curl was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan and rural New Jersey. His family was working class, a mixture of Irish-Catholic, English-Protestant, and Romanian-Austrian Jew. He attended CCNY, with a semester at the Sorbonne, and earned a bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature.
He has lived in Berkeley, California, since 1971 with his wife Jill, a librarian, and has worked as a professional woodworker at Heartwood Cooperative Woodshop since 1974. Involved in the cooperative movement in the Bay Area since the early 1970s, he was a founding member of the InterCollective and an editor of the Collective Directory (1981–85). He is longtime chairman of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC), promoting art and industrial zoning, has served as a Berkeley planning commissioner, and is a founding member of the Indigenous Peoples' Day Committee, which organizes the annual Berkeley Pow Wow. He is a longtime board member of PEN Oakland and PEN Center USA. [1]
His best known book is probably his history of the cooperative and communalist movements, For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America (PM Press, 2009), which historian Howard Zinn described as "inspiring." Memories of Drop City (2007) is his memoir of the 1960s communal movement and the first "hippie" commune, in Colorado, where he lived between 1966 and 1969, which Ishmael Reed called "highly crafted and brilliant," and Al Young described as "compelling." His play The Trial of Christopher Columbus was produced by the PEN Oakland Writers Theater in Berkeley (2009).
He is author of seven books of poetry, including Scorched Birth (2004), which former San Francisco poet laureate Jack Hirschman called "a book of wonders." His poetry books include Columbus in the Bay of Pigs (1991); Decade (1987); and Tidal News (1982); and has published poems in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Words Upon the Waters, Oakland Out Loud, Blake Times, Left Curve, Central Park, Poetry USA, Anthology of East Bay Poets, Poetry Flash , and Pulse of the People. He was a member of the San Francisco Cloud House circle of poets in the 1980s. In 1975 his series of 22 Wall Poems in spray paint and broadsides were published in Insurrection/Resurrection. He was co-host of Poetry for the People radio show on KPOO San Francisco, 1979-1980. He edited Red Coral, a web zine, [2] between 1999 and 2003. He represented the USA at the World Poetry Festival in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2010. Poet Mary Rudge called him "a Master Poet who uses language in a remarkable, innovative way, he gives us information on contradictions in the evolving state of human consciousness." An anthology of his poetry translated into Spanish by Rei Berroa was scheduled to be published by Editorial el Perro y la Rana (Caracas) in 2011.
His study of American Indian languages, beginning with Navajo at the Tohajiilee Indian Reservation in New Mexico, led to his translations in Ancient American Poets (2005) of three poets of ancient Indigenous America: Flower Songs by Nezahualcoyotl (Nahuatl–Aztec), Songs of Dzitbalche by Ah Bam (Yucatec Maya), and The Sacred Hymns of the Situa by Pachacuti (Quechua–Inca), along with biographies of the poets. Some of these translations are featured on the web site of FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Meso-American Studies, Inc.), which is scheduled to merge into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) web site. His transcriptions of Pachacuti poems form the libretto for classical composer Tania León's Ancient (2009).
A second expanded edition of For All The People, with a new foreword by Ishmael Reed, was published by PM Press in 2012. Curl's collected poems, Revolutionary Alchemy, with a foreword by San Francisco poet laureate Jack Hirschman, came out that same year. Hirschman wrote: "The importance of this book and John Curl in the pantheon of revolutionary poets… Revolutionary Alchemy is a book of major importance. John Curl has earned a place—with this book of poems—among the foremost revolutionary American poets since the end of WW2."
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected titles related to San Francisco culture. It was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. Both the store and the publishers became widely known following the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti for publishing Allen Ginsberg's influential collection Howl and Other Poems. Nancy Peters started working there in 1971 and retired as executive director in 2007. In 2001, City Lights was made an official historic landmark. City Lights is located at 261 Columbus Avenue. While formally located in Chinatown, it self-identifies as part of immediately adjacent North Beach.
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the "Sweet Singer of California", she was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state.
Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Vallejo, California. She is the author of Heart Songs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, including the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California, and three anthologies of peace poems edited by Mary Rudge from Estuary Press. She has also translated two chapbooks from Peruvian poet Adrian Arias. She currently leads storytelling workshops at senior centers and elementary schools through Stagebridge.org. She is the former director of the San Francisco Poetry in the Schools program and the Bay Area's Storytellers in the Schools program. A Latina activist for social justice, women's rights, and the arts.
Philip Lamantia was an American poet, writer and lecturer. His poetry incorporated stylistic experimentation and transgressive themes, and has been regarded as surrealist and visionary, contributing to the literature of the Beat Generation.
William "Bill" Everson, also known as Brother Antoninus, was an American poet, literary critic, teacher and small press printer. He was a member of the San Francisco Renaissance.
Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
Neeli Cherkovski was an American poet and memoirist, who resided from 1975 onwards in San Francisco.
Jack Hirschman was an American poet and social activist who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry and essays.
Paul Hoover is an American poet and editor born in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, toonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
Barbara Jane Reyes is an American poet whose work "explores the translatable and untranslatable collisions of writing, self and culture."
Nellie Wong is an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Wong is also an active member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
The [Book of the] Songs of Dzitbalché, originally titled The Book of the Dances of the Ancients, is a Mayan book containing poetry. It is the source of almost all the ancient Mayan lyric poems that have survived, and is closely connected to the Books of Chilam Balam which are sacred books of the colonial Yucatec Maya. The sole surviving copy of the Songs of Dzitbalché was written in alphabetic Mayan in the 18th century.
North Atlantic Books is a non-profit, independent publisher based in Berkeley, California, United States. Distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services, North Atlantic Books is a mission-driven social justice-oriented publisher. Founded by authors Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough in Vermont, North Atlantic Books was named partly for the North Atlantic region where it began in 1974, as well as Alan Van Newkirk's Geographic Foundation of the North Atlantic, an early (1970) ecological center founded in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, by radicals from Detroit. The publisher also cites Edward Dorn's 1960s poem, "North Atlantic Turbine: A Theory of Truth", which very early described the dangers of global commoditization by the Western World, as an inspiration in the company's name.
Adam David Miller was an American poet, writer, publisher, and radio programmer and producer. Born in Branchville, South Carolina, Miller published one of the first collections of modern African-American poetry, as well as five books of poetry and two memoirs, including Ticket to Exile about his life growing up in the Jim Crow South. He died in November 2020 at the age of 98.
Adam Cornford is a British poet, journalist, and essayist and a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. From 1987 to 2008 he led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco.
Thomas Centolella is an American poet and educator. He has published four books of poetry and has had many poems published in periodicals including American Poetry Review. He has received awards for his poetry including those from the National Poetry Series, the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the Dorset Prize. In 2019, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Clive Matson is an American direct expression lyric poet and creative writing teacher.
Lucille Lang Day is an American poet, writer, and science and health educator. Day has authored or edited 20 books and is a contributor to over 60 anthologies. She is best known as a poet and writer for her award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, for her integration of science imagery and concepts into poetry and for advocating use of poetry as a tool in environmental activism. As a science and health educator, her many achievements have included promoting science education for girls and serving as codirector of Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community, a project that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and aimed to make biomedical science more accessible to underrepresented minorities.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is an American poet and activist. He is the current poet laureate of San Francisco, California.
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