Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander (born 1956) is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator.

Born in the Mojave Desert, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University and moved to Mexico, where he began to assemble poems and translations for Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women, a bilingual anthology. From Mexico, he moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he worked as a printer, and then to Providence, Rhode Island. Gander is a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The Whiting Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. He taught at Providence College and Harvard University before he became the Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor of Literary Arts and Comparative Literatures at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Writing and Translation

His poetry is lyrical and often complex rhythmically and structurally. Critic Karla Huston, writing in "Library Journal," notes that, "Owing to the poems' placement on the page and the near absence of punctuation, the reader is propelled through the verse, left with a sense of urgency and awe." Because of the frequency and particularity of Gander's references to the Virginia landscape, Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate, calls him "a Southern poet of a relatively rare kind, a restlessly experimental writer."

The subjects of Gander's formally innovative essays range from snapping turtles to translation to literary hoaxes. His critical essays have appeared in The Nation, Boston Review, and The New York Times Book Review.

In 2008, New Directions published As a Friend, Gander's novel of a gifted man, a land surveyor, whose impact on those around him provokes an atmosphere of intense self-examination and eroticism. In The New York Times Book Review, Jeanette Winterson praised As a Friend as "a strange and beautiful novel.... haunting and haunted." It needs, she wrote, "to be read slowly, to be uncovered like a secret or discovered like a treasure." It has been published in translation in Bulgarian, Spanish, French, and German editions.

Gander is a translator with a particular interest in poetry from Spain, Latin America, and Japan. Besides editing two anthologies of Mexican poetry, Gander has translated discrete volumes by Mexican poets, including "Watchword" and "No Shelter" by Pura Lopez Colome" and (PEN Translation Prize Finalist) "Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho." With Kyoko Yoshida, Gander translated "Spectacle & Pigsty: Selected Poems of Kiwao Nomura" (OmniDawn, 2011). The second book of his translations, with Kent Johnson, of Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz, "The Night" (Princeton, 2007), received a PEN Translation Award. Gander's critically acclaimed translations of the Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda are included in "The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems" (City Lights, 2004)

Selected publications

Full-Length Poetry Collections

• Core Samples from the World (New Directions, 2011)
• Eye Against Eye (New Directions, 2005)
• The Blue Rock Collection (Salt Publishing, 2004)
• Torn Awake (New Directions, 2001)
• Science & Steepleflower (New Directions, 1998)
• Deeds of Utmost Kindness (University Press of New England, 1994)
• Lynchburg (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993)
• Rush to the Lake (Alice James Books, 1988)

Chapbooks

• Eggplants and Lotus Root (Burning Deck, 1991)

Novels

• As a Friend (New Directions, 2008)

Collaborative Works

• Redstart: An Ecological Poetics (University of Iowa, 2012)] collaboration with John Kinsella)
• Twelve X 12:00 (The Nederlands, 2003, collaboration with artist Tjibbe Hooghiemstra)
• Sound of Summer Running (Nazraeli Press, 2005, collaboration with photographer Ray Meeks)

Essay Collections

• A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory and Transcendence (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005)

In Translation

• Ligaduras (Ventana Abierta Editorial, Santiago, 2011)
• Als es dich gab. Roman (luxbooks, Wiesbaden, 2010)
• Libreto para eros (Amargord, Madrid, 2010)
• En Ami (Sabine Wespieser Editeur, Paris, 2010)
• Като приятел (Altera, Sofia, 2010)

Translations

• Fungus Skull Eye Wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso D'Aquino (Copper Canyon]], 2013)
• Watchword by Pura Lopez Colome (Wesleyan University Press, 2012)
• Spectacle & Pigsty: Selected Poems of Kiwao Nomura (OmniDawn, 2011) with Kyoko Yoshida
• Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (New Directions, 2008)
• The Night: A Poem by Jaime Saenz (Princeton University Press, 2007) with Kent Johnson
• No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome (Graywolf Press, 2002)
• Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz (University of California Press, 2011) with Kent Johnson

Anthologies Edited

• Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico (Sarabande Books, 2006)
• Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women (Milkweed Editions, 1993)

Awards and honors

• Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship, 2011
• United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, 2008
• Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2008
• Howard Foundation Award, 2005
• Pen Translation Fund Award, 2004
• Pushcart Prize, 2000
• Jessica Nobel Maxwell Memorial Prize (from American Poetry Review, 1998)
• Whiting Writer’s Award, 1997
• Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative North American Poetry (1997, 1993)
• Fund for Poetry Award, 1994
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry (1989, 2001)

External links

• Author Website
• Brown University > Forrest Gander Resume
• Brown University > Comparatative Literature Faculty > Forrest Gander
• Audio: Gander reading at the Key West Literary Seminar in 2003
• Author Bio: Jacket Magazine
• Essay: The Nymph Stick Insect: Observations on Science, Poetry, and Creation > Author Website
• Poem: Conjunctions Issue 44/Spring 2005 > Mission Thief > By Forrest Gander
• Review: Great American Pinup > Review of Eye Against Eye > By Forrest Gander
• Audio: The East Village Poetry Web > Forrest Gander Reading Three Poems
• Video: Gander Reading and Lecture at U. of Chicago, 2006