Richard Jeffrey Newman will read his poetry at the next program in the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series. The event will be held at Baby Grand Books at 7 West Street in Warwick at 4:00 p.m. on October 4. Following the feature, others are welcome to read original work. Admission is free.
Poet, translator, essayist and educator, Richard Jeffrey Newman is the author of a book of original poetry, The Silence Of Men (which includes a foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa), and of Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan and Selections from Saadi’s Bustan, translations of two masterpieces of 13th century Iranian poetry. In addition, he co-translated with Prof. John Moyne a selection of work by Rumi titled A Bird in the Garden of Angels,.
Newman’s poems and essays have appeared in a wide range of journals, including Salon.com, The American Voice, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review. In addition, he has completed a verse translation of a book-length section of the Shahnameh, the Persian national epic, for which he is seeking a publisher. Richard Jeffrey Newman is Literary Arts Director of Persian Arts Festival, sits on the advisory board of The Translation Project. He is Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, where he coordinates the Creative Writing Project.
Newman says, “I first called myself a poet when I was 22 years old. That choice saved my life. Giving myself to the language, claiming the language as mine to work, was a paradox I did not even understand that I was entering; and yet entering that paradox gave me my voice back (how I lost it is a story too long to tell here). It also gave me – and I am not being melodramatic – a reason to live.”
In his translations, which were commissioned by the International Society for Iranian Culture, he has focused on finding verse forms in English that can embody the spirit and content of the poetic masterpieces he has been asked to work with, the formal characteristics of which are virtually impossible to reproduce in English. Newman’s work as a translator has also led him to investigate the reception of classical Iranian literature in the English-speaking world.
This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
On November 1, Jake St. John, Colleen Keenan, and Dave Spinelli of the New London (Connecticut) school of poets will read.
For further information, contact: William Seaton/ Poetry on the Loose, Inc. at 845-294-8085 or email seaton@frontiernet.net
