Rosita Copioli, born in Riccione, Italy, in 1948, is a poet, teacher, and literary critic. She took the Ph.D. at the University of Bologna in classical studies with a dissertation on “The Idea of Landscape in Leopardi.” Her books of poems include SPLENDIDA LUMINA SOLIS (Forlí, Forum, 1979) and FURORE DELLE ROSE (Ugo Guanda Editore, S.p.A., Parma, 1989). Her books of essays include I GIARDINI DEI POPOLI SOTTO LE ONDE and IL FUOCO DELL’EDEN (1992).She has been editor of the journal of poetry and poetics: L'altro versante, and guest editor of Il crepuscolo celtico and ANIMA MUNDI (Guanda Editore). In 1979 she won the Premio Viareggio (First Work) and in 1989 the Premio Montale.

Hua Li, formerly a reporter for Radio Beijing, earned a graduate degree in political science in the United States, where she has lived for the past ten years. She imports furniture from China. “Hua Li” is a pseudonym. Part 1 appeared in Archipelago Vol. 5, No. 1.

Samuel Menashe was born in New York City in 1925. In 1943 he enlisted in the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. After training in England, his division (the 87^th) fought in France, Belgium (the Battle of the Bulge), and Germany. in 1950 he was awarded a doctorat d’université by the Sorbonne. His first book, THE MANY NAMED BELOVED, was published in London in 1961. In 1966, his poems were featured in PENGUIN MODERN POETS, Vol. 7 (London). His latest volume is THE NICHE NARROWS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Talisman House).

Michael Rothenberg is a poet and song-writer and the co-editor and -publisher of Big Bridge, a journal of poetry on-line. He is co-founder of Big Bridge Press, which publishes chapbooks and handsome botanica. With Mary Sands, he also co-edits Jack Magazine. Michael Rothenberg is the editor of OVERTIME, Selected Poems of Philip Whalen (Penguin, 1999), and author of PARIS JOURNALS (Fish Drum, 2000), poems, and PUNK ROCKWELL (Tropical Press, 2000), a novel.

Cynthia Tedesco is the author of a collection of poetry, LETTERS FOUND AFTER… (Sesquin Press, 1997). She is a former editor of Barrow Street, a bi-annual journal of poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Apex of The M, Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, Talisman, Gargoyle, and The Montserrat Review.

Renata Treitel, a teacher, poet and translator, was born in Switzerland, and educated in Italy, Argentina, and the United States. She has published GERMAN NOTEBOOK a chapbook of poems. Her translations include Susana Thénon, distancias/distances (Sun & Moon Press, 1994); Rosita Copioli, SPLENDIDA LUMINA SOLIS/THE BLAZING LIGHTS OF THE SUN (Sun and Moon Press, 1996); Amelia Biagioni, LAS CACERIAS/THE HUNTS (Xenos Books, forthcoming). Renata Treitel has received two Witter Bynner Translation Grants and in 1997, won the Oklahoma Poetry Award Winner. Her villanelle “The Burden of Silence” appeared in Archipelago Vol. 4, No. 3.

News of our Contributors

Jane Barnes is the recipient of the Writer’s Guild Award for her documentary screenplay for John Paul II: The Millennial Pope, shown on Frontline, PBS. As Jane Barnes Casey, she is the author of I, KRUPSKAYA, MY LIFE WITH LENIN (Houghton Mifflin) and as Jane Barnes, of DOUBLE LIVES (Doubleday). She is a Director of Archipelago.

Martin Goodman’s  I WAS CARLOS CASTAÑEDA: The Afterlife Dialogues (Three Rivers Press, p.b.) has been published. His “Testimony,” from an interview with James Broughton, appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 4, No. 1.

Norman Lock is the author of JOSEPH CORNELL’S OPERAS and EMIGRÉS, a collection of extended fictions drawn from his series “History of the Imagination,” published by elimae books. Copies of this hand-made volume may be ordered from Deron Bauman. Norman Lock’s “The Elephant Hunters” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 3, No. 3.

Katherine McNamara, editor of Archipelago, is the author of NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH, A Journey into the Interior of Alaska (Mercury House). Reviews and information may be seen on the publisher’s website. An excerpt, “The Repetition of Their Days,” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 2, No. 3, and is in the current Jack Magazine.

Maria Negroni: ISLANDIA, a book-length poem translated from the Spanish by Anne Twitty, has just appeared in a bilingual edition published by Station Hill Press. Selections from other books by Maria Negroni, also translated by Anne Twitty, appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 1, No. 1 and, Vol. 2, No.4. ISLANDIA can be ordered through Consortium or 1-800-283-3572, or directly from Station Hill.

To the Editor:

A friend in England contacted me to say

1.Neil Ascherson did foreword for GRANDMOTHER AND WOLFE TONE, not Eoin Harris, as she said you had written.
2. That Kilkenny castle was a “generous gift to the people of Kilkenny,” not “sold for a song.”
3. She really liked Archipelago, and Chris Agee’s essays.

Julia Crampton
via electronic mail
Chris Agee’s “The Balkan Butler” and “The Stepinac File” appeared in Vol. 5, No. 1. The Endnotes “A Local Habitation and a Name,” about the Hubert Butler Centenary Celebration in Kilkenny last October, appeared in the same issue.

To the Editor:

I had the most wonderful mid summers night. I’m staying here at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, in the northern county of Monaghan here in Ireland. It is an artists retreat where writers, composers, artists etc. come to work. I have come to concentrate on my own work, without having to thinking about organizing group exhibitions, catalogs, photographing other people’s work, mowing lawns, feeding chickens, and answering phones and all that life in the real world entails. Yet, am meeting interesting people over the evening meal once a day, taking beautiful gardens and glorious walks around the lake and through wood land, coming across deer, badger, hare, herons, and wild swan.

Last night a group of us went up into the woods on the hilltop and built a bonfire in the center of an old ring fort (a Rath). At the crest of the hill the view is of rolling distant hills quilted with fields, hedge rows and forestry, coming down to Annaghmakerrig Lake, a still deep green glass, its surface reflecting the colors of the evening sky ruffled only in the wake of a small family of swans. Then rising up the hill across the park land are mature copper beech, oak, scots pine, silhouetted against the sky like a Japanese painting, towards the house with its arched angles, pale yellow walls, and red-sashed windows. Behind the house, a sloping field yellow with buttercups and soft purple-topped long grass, still in the evening calm. We stood before the forest taking in this view before the mid-summer night’s royal velvet blue covered us in its dome. No moon; but stars. No light from any source for miles into the distance.

Turning into the forest we clambered over the ancient prehistoric moss-covered walls into the woods. Earlier three of us had come across this location on our daily walk and felt it perfect for a mid-summer-night celebration, and had built a bonfire. All we had to do now was to light it. A Forester had kindly been during the year before and had cut down some nice sized trees and cut the trunks up, which made perfect dry moss-cushioned seats. The stillness of the night descended on a laughing, singing, drinking, smoking group of people around a fire covered by a canopy of beech, surrounded by prehistoric stone walls. Someone had brought up candles, which we lit and planted along the trunk of a fallen tree. The songs sung were American folk, blues, Gershwin, musicals, Irish folk and modern, some French, Spanish and even a lovely Greek one.

Through the canopy of leaves one could see the royal blue sky which never darkened into night. As the night went on the party of people thinned till there were only four of us. Finally in silence we sat on our logs staring into the orange flames, lost in thought and listening for the first bird to sing its morning song.

“Oh beautiful, beautiful day you have come, this is the land and sky, I’m alive, alive, alive to live another day and find my first worm.”

The log I was sitting on was opposite the opening into the Rath. As the blue of mid-summer’s night faded into dawns gloaming I could see out into the world outside our room in the woods. A world of mist rising like a tide, rising up so that tree tops and hills floated darkly like islands in swirling waters of soft white. The birds singing glad to be and the dew heavy we walked out of our wooded den, having stamped our fire out, into a field white with dew and a view that transported us all to another time and place.

Walking down the hill towards the house all congratulating each other and thankful that we had stayed up for a masterpiece of nature. Arriving back at the house we settled into cooking ourselves a huge fry-up, eggs, rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, toast, tea and orange juice. To bed we all went exhausted and happy to be alive.
 

Suzanna Crampton

suzanna@crampton.com

Three photographs by Suzanna Crampton appeared in Archipelago Vol. 5, No. 1.

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