Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo (12 April 1934 – 29 January 2013) was a Finnish poet and translator. He lived in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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.

Personal life

Paavo Anselm Aleksis Hollo was born in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

, 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 (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

, 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. He lived for eight years in the United Kingdom, 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 List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city in Boulder County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the most ...

, with his second wife, artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo.

Career

In the 1960s, Hollo lived in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, England, and worked at the Finnish section of

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. 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 Erkki Matti Toivanen (18 May 1938 – 21 July 2011) was a Finnish journalist and Television presenter, presenter for Yleisradio. Career After gaining a master's degree in political history from the University of Helsinki in 1962, Toivanen ...

. Around this time, Hollo was also beginning to make a name for himself as a poet in the English language. In 1965, he performed at the " underground" International Poetry Incarnation, London. Also in the same year, the first customer of the Indica Bookshop, a certain

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

, 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 elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate", in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins to the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Hollo translated poetry 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 pej ...

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 Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

into German and Finnish. Hollo taught

creative writing Creative writing is any writing that goes beyond the boundaries of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on craft and technique, such as narrative structure, character ...

in eighteen different institutions of higher learning, including SUNY Buffalo, the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 89 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2 ...

, and the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a Public university, public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a Federated state, state, it is the fla ...

. From 1985, he taught in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at

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

, 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 and Alice Notley named their son Anselm Berrigan after Hollo. Hollo became ill during the summer of 2012 and had brain surgery. He 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''. Chatham, Kent: New Voice, 1963 * ''Jazz poems''. London: Vista Books, 1963 * ''& (And) it is a song : poems''. Birmingham: Migrant Press, 1965 * ''Faces & Forms: Poems''. London: Ambit, 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''. London: Goliard Press, 1966 * *''Alembic'', Trigram Press (distributed by Allison and Busby, 1972 * * ''Finite Continued'', Blue Wind Press, 1980 () * *

Anthologies

* * *

References

External links

The Anti-Laureate Announcement

at '' Samizdat (poetry magazine)''
"Add-Verse"
a poetry-photo-video project Hollo participated in.
Poetry Foundation announcement of Hollo's death
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollo, Anselm 1934 births 2013 deaths 20th-century Finnish male writers 20th-century Finnish people 20th-century Finnish poets 20th-century Finnish translators Beat Generation writers Deaths from pneumonia in Colorado English-language poets Finnish expatriates in the United States Finnish male poets Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty Naropa University faculty Translators to English Writers from Helsinki