tempt to leave the country because his passport, returned by border authorities few days before, was missing some stamps. He was released an hour later and granted permission to leave Macedonia. Martin Zet came back home on the 3rd of July, but he does not feel free yet.
TOMAZ SALAMUN
Tomaž Šalamun
Tomaž Šalamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has a degree in Art History from the University of Ljubljana, and before devoting himself to poetry he worked as a conceptual artist. He has published thirty collections of poetry in his home country and is recognized as one of the leading poets in Central Europe. Among his honours include the Preseren Fund Prize, the Jenko Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a visiting Fulbright to Columbia University, and a fellowship to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He has also served as Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Embassy in New York. Besides having his work appear in numerous journals internationally, he has had four collections of selected poetry published in English: The Selected Poems of Tomaz Salamun (Ecco Press, 1988); The Shepherd, the Hunter (Pedernal, 1992); The Four Questions of Melancholy (White Pine, 1997); and Feast (Harcourt Brace, 2000). He is married to the painter Metka Krasovec. A Ballad for Metka Krasovec is published by Twisted Spoon Press (2001).
NICHITA DANILOV Nichita Danilov
Nichita Danilov (b. 1952) is the author of seven books of poetry and three of prose. His debut volume was awarded the Romanian Writers’ Union Prize for First Books, and he has been awarded other prizes by the Writers’ Union in the Republic of Moldova and the Soros Foundation. Not ethnically Romanian, Danilov was raised speaking both Russian and Romanian, but writes solely in the latter language. In English his work has appeared in the anthologies Young Poets of a New Romania and City of Dreams and Whispers. He has previously worked as an accountant, theatre director, teacher, and for three years was Romania’s Cultural Attaché to the Republic of Moldova. A regular contributor to periodicals, he lives in Iasi where he is currently editor-inchief of a Romanian-Russian cultural magazine. Second-Hand Souls is published by Twisted Spoon Press (2003).
SANDOR KANYADI
Sándor Kányádi
Schloss Tegal
Sándor Kányádi was born in 1929 in the small Transylvanian village of Galambfalva to a family of farmers. Since 1950 he has lived in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) Romania. A graduate in Hungarian philology from Bólyai University, he has served as editor on a number of Hungarian-language journals and magazines. Since his first book of poetry appeared in 1955 he has published over a dozen volumes. His translation work includes both Saxon folk poetry and Yiddish folk poetry from Transylvania—in bilingual volumes—as well as contemporary Romanian poets and the major German and French poets of the 19th and 20th centuries. His is the recipient of the Poetry Prize of the Romanian Writers’ Union and the Kossuth Prize in Hungary, the pre-eminent literary awards of their respective countries, the Austrian Herder Prize, and the Central European Time Millennium Prize (2000). Kányádi now divides his time between Budapest and his cottage in the Transylvanian countryside. Dancing Embers is published by Twisted Spoon Press (2002).
VIT KREMLICKA Vít Kremlička (1962 Prague): Poet, prose writer, occasional journalist, from 1982-1985 Kremlička was a member of the band Národní třída and from 1986-1988 he played in the heavy-metal group His Boys. Before 1989 his work was published in samizdat and he was a co-founder of the influential cultural journal Jednou nohou (later Revolver Revue) as well as the Informační servis (later the weekly Respekt). He has published widely in journals, magazines and newspapers. His books include two volumes of prose: Lodní deník (for which he won the Jiří Orten Prize in 1991); Zemský
povídky (Hynek, 1999), three volumes of poetry: Cizrna (Torst, 1995); Staré zpěvy (Revolver Revue, 1997); Amazonia (Klokočí/ Knihovna Jana Drdy, 2003), and one collection of poetry and prose encompassing his work from 1995-2001: Prozatím (Petrov, 2001). Translations of his work have appeared abroad in a number of publications and a collection of his writing is forthcoming in English from Twisted Spoon Press.
PHIL SHOENFELT Phil Shoenfelt was born in Bradford, England, in December 1952. After colliding with the London punk scene in the mid-1970s, he moved to New York where he lived and played in several bands, such as Khmer Rouge, and was active on the downtown Manhattan arts scene. Returning to London in 1984, he continued making music until encroaching heroin addiction brought a temporary halt to all such activity. Finally kicking the habit after eleven years, he embarked upon a solo career and in 1995 moved to Prague, where he currently lives. In recent years he has produced several CDs with Southern Cross and with the Berlinbased group The Fatal Shore. His books include The Green Hotel/Zeleny Hotel (Prague: Mat’a Books, 1998) and Junkie Love, which was published in Prague by Twisted Spoon Press, 2001.
Phil Shoenfelt, by Barry Myles
LAURA CONWAY Laura Conway spent many years in San Francisco as poet, editor and publisher in its thriving poetry scene before moving to Prague in 1994. She is the author of four books of poetry including My Mama Pinned A Rose On Me (Red Flower Ink, 1987), and The Cities of Madame Curie (Zeitgeist Press, 1990), co-editor of a forthcoming Czech translation of 20 of San Francisco’s underground poets, & former editor of Optimism, a monthly Prague literary magazine. Her most recent publication is The Alphabet of Trees (Concordia Press, Prague, 2002) with collaborative artwork by Kateřina Pinosová.
Oystein Hauge
ROD MENGHAM Rod Mengham is Reader in Modern English Literature at the University of Cambridge, where he is also Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College. He is the author of The Descent of Language (1993). He has edited collections of essays on contemporary fiction, violence and avant-garde art, and the fiction of the 1940s. He has written on art for various magazines and composes the catalogues for the biennial ‘Sculpture in the Close’ exhibition, at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is also the editor of the Equipage series of poetry pamphlets and co-editor and co-translator of Altered State: the New Polish Poetry (Arc Publications, 2003). His own poems have been published under the title Unsung: New and Selected Poems (Salt, 2001).
FRITZ WIDHALM Fritz Widhalm was born in 1956 in Feichsen, Austria, and currently lives in Vienna. His work spans performance, music, theatre and poetry. He has published numerous books, including Dieses Ufer ist rascher als ein Fluss! Des Verwicklungsromans erster Teil (with Ilse Kilic) (1999); Ich bin ganz normal (1995); and mr. elk & mr. seal (1999).
Fritz Widhalm
Róbert Gál
ROBERT GAL Róbert Gál was born in 1968 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Having resided in various cities as a student (Brno, Prague, New York, Jerusalem), he now lives in Prague where he lectures in philosophy at the Josef Skvorecký Literary Academy. He is the author of several books of aphorisms and philosophical fragments. His recent book of poetical aphorisms, Signs and Symptoms, is published in Prague by Twisted Spoon Press (2003).
TREVOR JOYCE Born in Dublin 1947, Trevor Joyce co-founded New Writers’ Press in Dublin with Michael Smith, and edited the influential journal, The Lace Curtain until the mid-70s. His poems have appeared internationally in many journals, and he has published eleven volumes of
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