Description
Eva Salzman is a thoroughly modern, urban poet who writes with equal wit and precision about the natural - and unnatural world. In her sceptical, restless poems, irreverent muses and relentless twins take on sharply contemporary subjects: society, the unreliability of memory and - especially - identity, gender and love, sexual or otherwise. Born in New York, Eva Salzman moved to Britain in 1985, and four books later has firmly established herself as one of our most irrepressible and necessary poets. Double Crossing includes many new poems as well as selections from collections including The English Earthquake, Bargain with the Watchman and One Two. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
About the Author
Eva Salzman grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island where she worked as a dancer/choreographer. At Stuyvesant High School her teacher was Frank McCourt; later, at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she received her MFA, she studied with Derek Walcott, Joseph Brodsky, C.K. Williams, Edmund White, Stanley Kunitz, Carolyn Kizer, Stephen Sandy, Elizabeth Hardwick and Jorie Graham. She moved to Britain in 1985 and lives in London. Her teaching experience, for adults and children, has included projects in London's East End, a residency at Springhill Prison, continuing work for the Poetry Society's educational programmes, and co-devising a Start Writing Poetry course for the Open University. She has been Adjunct Professor at Friends World Programme (Long Island University - London), West Midlands Writing Fellow at Warwick University, where she co-taught the Poetry MA, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Ruskin College, Oxford. Her grandmother was a child vaudeville actress; her mother is an environmentalist and her father a composer. This background, and a diverse range of jobs - Exercise Director of a Brooklyn orthodox Jewish diet centre, out-of-print book searcher and cleaner of rich ladies' houses - all inform her writing, especially her cross-arts projects with visual artists and performers. She has collaborated with director Rufus Norris and with composers Ian McQueen, Gary Carpenter, Rachel Leach, Philip Cashian, A.L. Nicolson, and her father, Eric Salzman. Her operas have been performed by the English National Opera Studio and abroad, in Olso, Vienna and Dusseldorf. She is currently writing an original libretto for Buxton Festival 2005. She has received grants from the Arts Council and Society of Authors, and won a Cholmondeley Award in 2004. All her books have been Poetry Book Society Recommendations or Special Commendations. As well as new work, her Bloodaxe retrospective Double Crossing: New & Selected Poems (2004) includes poems drawn from The English Earthquake (Bloodaxe Books, 1992), Bargain with the Watchman (Oxford University Press, 1997), the pamphlet One Two (Jones Press, 2002) and the fuller-length One Two II (Wrecking Ball Press, 2003).
Reviews
Eva Salzman is no slouch. She has a satirist's eye and ear alert to the emotional and verbal cliche, the easy lie, and she can be gracefully ruthless. She can shift register from the formal and elegiac to an astringent New York sarcasm. She can shuffle the vocabularies of love and landscape, turn the grotesque poignant, the funny terrifying - a facility rare on either side of the Atlantic. -- Michael Donaghy
Eva Salzman is one of the most accomplished poets working in Britain today... her wit, directness and fresh approach to language, whether fierce or lyrical, may be seen as American qualities... From the first moment I encountered her poetry, I knew that Eva Salzman was the real thing, devoted to a demanding but sparking art. She is at the height of her powers at the moment. -- Peter Porter
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246617
Author Eva Salzman
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
About the Author
Eva Salzman grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island where she worked as a dancer/choreographer. At Stuyvesant High School her teacher was Frank McCourt; later, at Bennington College and Columbia University, where she received her MFA, she studied with Derek Walcott, Joseph Brodsky, C.K. Williams, Edmund White, Stanley Kunitz, Carolyn Kizer, Stephen Sandy, Elizabeth Hardwick and Jorie Graham. She moved to Britain in 1985 and lives in London. Her teaching experience, for adults and children, has included projects in London's East End, a residency at Springhill Prison, continuing work for the Poetry Society's educational programmes, and co-devising a Start Writing Poetry course for the Open University. She has been Adjunct Professor at Friends World Programme (Long Island University - London), West Midlands Writing Fellow at Warwick University, where she co-taught the Poetry MA, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Ruskin College, Oxford. Her grandmother was a child vaudeville actress; her mother is an environmentalist and her father a composer. This background, and a diverse range of jobs - Exercise Director of a Brooklyn orthodox Jewish diet centre, out-of-print book searcher and cleaner of rich ladies' houses - all inform her writing, especially her cross-arts projects with visual artists and performers. She has collaborated with director Rufus Norris and with composers Ian McQueen, Gary Carpenter, Rachel Leach, Philip Cashian, A.L. Nicolson, and her father, Eric Salzman. Her operas have been performed by the English National Opera Studio and abroad, in Olso, Vienna and Dusseldorf. She is currently writing an original libretto for Buxton Festival 2005. She has received grants from the Arts Council and Society of Authors, and won a Cholmondeley Award in 2004. All her books have been Poetry Book Society Recommendations or Special Commendations. As well as new work, her Bloodaxe retrospective Double Crossing: New & Selected Poems (2004) includes poems drawn from The English Earthquake (Bloodaxe Books, 1992), Bargain with the Watchman (Oxford University Press, 1997), the pamphlet One Two (Jones Press, 2002) and the fuller-length One Two II (Wrecking Ball Press, 2003).
Reviews
Eva Salzman is no slouch. She has a satirist's eye and ear alert to the emotional and verbal cliche, the easy lie, and she can be gracefully ruthless. She can shift register from the formal and elegiac to an astringent New York sarcasm. She can shuffle the vocabularies of love and landscape, turn the grotesque poignant, the funny terrifying - a facility rare on either side of the Atlantic. -- Michael Donaghy
Eva Salzman is one of the most accomplished poets working in Britain today... her wit, directness and fresh approach to language, whether fierce or lyrical, may be seen as American qualities... From the first moment I encountered her poetry, I knew that Eva Salzman was the real thing, devoted to a demanding but sparking art. She is at the height of her powers at the moment. -- Peter Porter
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246617
Author Eva Salzman
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
