Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo (12 April 1934 – 29 January 2013) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

poet and translator. He lived in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

from 1967 until his death in January 2013. Hollo published more than forty titles of poetry in the United Kingdom and in the United States, with a style strongly influenced by the American

beat poets Beat, beats or beating may refer to: Common uses * Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area ** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols ** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men * Battery ...

Personal life

Paavo Anselm Aleksis Hollo was born in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

, Finland. His father, Juho August Hollo (1885–1967) — who liked to be known as "J. A." Hollo — was professor of pedagogy at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the R ...

, an essayist, and a major translator of literature into Finnish. His mother was Iris Antonina Anna Walden (1899–1983), a music teacher and daughter of organic chemist

Paul Walden Paul Walden ( lv, Pauls Valdens; russian: Павел Иванович Вальден; german: Paul von Walden; 26 July 1863 – 22 January 1957) was a Russian, Latvian and German chemist known for his work in stereochemistry and history of chem ...

. He lived for eight years in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

and had three children, Hannes, Kaarina, and Tamsin, with his first wife, poet Josephine Clare. He was a permanent resident in the United States from the late 1960s until his death. At the time of his death, he resided in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Colora ...

with his second wife, artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo.

Career

In the 1960s Hollo lived in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and worked at the Finnish section of

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the British Government through the Foreign Secretary's office. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception a ...

. One of his tasks there was to write radio dramas in Finnish, together with another Finnish poet, Matti Rossi. The music to their productions was written by Erkki Toivanen. Around this time he was also beginning to make a name for himself as a poet in the English language. In 1965, Hollo performed at the " underground"

International Poetry Incarnation The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 June 1965. Background In May 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, an independent bookstore in London's Charing Cross Road, and offered to read any ...

, London. Also in the same year, the first customer of the

Indica Bookshop Indica Gallery was a counterculture art gallery in Mason's Yard (off Duke Street, St James's, Duke Street), St James's, London from 1965 to 1967, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop. John Dunbar (artist), John Dunbar, Peter Asher, and Barry ...

, a certain

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

, is known to have bought, among other things, the book ''& it is a song'' by Anselm Hollo the day before the bookshop was officially opened. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo

POETICS list The University of Buffalo POETICS listserv (informally and variously known as UBPOETICS or the POETICS list) was one of the oldest and most widely known mailing lists devoted to the discussion of contemporary North American poetry and poetics. It ...

elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate", in protest at the appointment of

Billy Collins William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York (retired, 2016). Collins ...

to the position of

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...

. Hollo translated

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

and

belles-lettres is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...

from Finnish, German, Swedish, and French into English. He was one of the early translators of

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

into German and Finnish. Hollo taught

creative writing Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...

in eighteen different institutions of higher learning, including

SUNY Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

, the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative ...

, and the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

. Since 1985, he taught in the

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is a school of Naropa University, located in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It was founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, as part of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s 100-year experimen ...

Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself a ...

, where he held the rank of Full Professor. Several of his poems have been set into music by pianist and composer Frank Carlberg. Poets

Ted Berrigan Ted Berrigan (November 15, 1934 – July 4, 1983) was an American poet. Early life Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army. After ...

and

Alice Notley Alice Notley (born November 8, 1945) is an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific mo ...

named their son

Anselm Berrigan Anselm Berrigan (born 1972) is an American poet and teacher. Life and work Anselm Berrigan grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mar ...

after Hollo. Hollo became ill during the summer of 2012 and had brain surgery. Hollo died from post-operative pneumonia on 29 January 2013 at the age of 78.

Awards

* 1979 NEA and Poets Foundation fellowships * 1996 Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry 1995–1996 * 1996 Finnish State Award for Foreign Translators * 2001 best book of poems Award by the San Francisco Poetry Center, for ''Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965–2000'' * 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award

Selected publications

* ''Sateiden välillä'', runoja. Otava, Helsinki 1956 * ''& (And) what else is new : a small pamphlet''. New voice, Chatham, Kent 1963 * ''Jazz poems''. Vista Books, London 1963 * ''& (And) it is a song : poems''. Migrant Press, Birmingham 1965 * ''Faces & Forms: Poems''. Ambit, London 1965 * ''Word from the north : new poetry from Finland, edited, translated and introduction by Anselm Hollo''. Blackburn London : Lancs., Poetmeat : Strangers press 1965 * ''The claim''. Goliard Press, London 1966 * *''Alembic'' Trigram Press 1972 * *''Finite Continued'', Blue Wind Press 1980 () * *

Anthologies

* * *

References

External links

The Anti-Laureate Announcement

at

Samizdat (poetry magazine) ''Samizdat'' was an international poetry magazine published in Chicago from 1998 until 2004 and edited by the poet Robert Archambeau. It was noted for its unusual format, being printed on large newsprint pages. Contributors included Adam Zagajews ...

"Add-Verse" a poetry-photo-video project Hollo participated in

Poetry Foundation announcement of Hollo's death
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollo, Anselm 1934 births 2013 deaths Writers from Helsinki Finnish expatriates in the United States Finnish male poets Beat Generation writers Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty Naropa University faculty Translators to English Camp Rising Sun alumni Finnish writers 20th-century Finnish people 20th-century translators 20th-century Finnish poets English-language poets 20th-century male writers Deaths from pneumonia in Colorado