Roger Greenwald
Encyclopedia
Biography
Roger Greenwald was born in New Jersey,where his father, a physicist, worked at the Fort Monmouth Signal Labs. He grew up in New York City
(the Bronx) and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. In 1966 he received his BA from The
City College of New York, where together with Richard Strier he edited four issues
of the college literary magazine, Promethean, and participated in the weekly Promethean Writers Workshop, which included, among others,
Peter Anson, Robert David Cohen, Samuel R. Delaney, Joel Sloman, and Lewis Warsh
Lewis Warsh
Lewis Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, New York. He is co-founder, with Anne Waldman, of Angel Hair Magazine and Books, and co-editor, with Bernadette Mayer, of United Artists Magazine and Books...
. Greenwald
then spent one year doing graduate work at New York University and attending the St. Marks in the
Bouwerie Poetry Project Workshop, led by the poet Joel Oppenheimer
Joel Oppenheimer
Joel Lester Oppenheimer was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project...
(assisted by Joel Sloman). Participants there included Sam Abrams
Sam Abrams
Sam Abrams was born in Brooklyn and is an American poet. Abrams was a Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Athens and currently is Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature in the College of Liberal Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology. Abrams is a graduate of...
, Scott
Cohen, Michael G. Stephens, and Tom Weatherly. After moving to Toronto, Greenwald earned his MA (1969)
and his PhD (1978) in English from the University of Toronto. He taught creative writing, translation,
and composition at Innis College, part of the University of Toronto, until 2006.
In 1970 Greenwald founded the international literary annual WRIT Magazine, which he edited until
it ceased publication in 1995. From 1982 onward, the Canadian poet Richard M. Lush served as Associate Editor.
The magazine was supported by Innis College and the Ontario Arts Council. Special issues of
WRIT included two devoted entirely to translations; starting with Number 19, each issue featured
one translated writer.
Greenwald was the regional editor for Denmark and Norway (and, with Rika Lesser
Rika Lesser
Rika Lesser is a U.S. poet, and is a translator of Swedish and German literary works.-Life:Lesser has produced three collections of her own poetry, including Etruscan Things , and her prose translations include A Living Soul by P. C...
, for Sápmi)
for the 2008 anthology New European Poets.
Greenwald began writing poetry at the age of eight and was first published when he was in high school. His first notable publication was a
poem that appeared in The World in 1968. In Canada his poetry won the Norma Epstein National
Writing Competition in 1977. He published his first book of poems, Connecting Flight, in 1993. The
next year he was the winner in the poetry category of the CBC Radio / Saturday Night Literary
Awards. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Panjandrum, Poetry East,
The Spirit That Moves Us, Pequod, Prism International, Leviathan Quarterly, ARS-INTERPRES, and Pleiades.
He won First Prize for Travel Literature in the 2002 CBC Literary Awards competition.
Greenwald is well known as a translator of Scandinavian literature, especially poetry. He has
published three volumes of work by the Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen
Rolf Jacobsen
Rolf Jacobsen could be said to be the first modernist writer in Norway. Jacobsen's career as a writer spanned more than fifty years. He is one of Scandinavia’s most distinguished poets, who launched poetic modernism in Norway with his first book, Jord og jern in 1933. Jacobsen's work has been...
(1907–1994), most recently
North in the World: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, which won the Lewis Galantière Award from the
American Translators Association. His other major translation from
Norwegian is Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas
Tarjei Vesaas
[Tarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Born in Vinje, Telemark, Vesaas is widely considered to be one of Norway's greatest writers of the twentieth century and perhaps its most important since World War II....
, which was shortlisted for
the 2001 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Further translations of poetry include two books by
the Norwegian Poet Paal-Helge Haugen
Paal-Helge Haugen
Paal-Helge Haugen is an award-winning Norwegian lyricist, novelist, dramatist and children's writer.Haugen was educated as a medical student at the University of Oslo. During the period 1965-67, Haugen was a member of the editorial team of literary magazine Profile...
, and The Time in Malmö on the Earth, by the Swede
Jacques Werup
Jacques Werup
Jacques Werup, born January 14, 1945 in Malmö, is a Swedish musician, author, poet, stage artist and screenwriter. Werup's poetry is often associated to jazz. He was a childhood friend of Mikael Wiehe and Göran Skytte and had his first novel published in 1971...
. Greenwald has also translated two works of fiction from Swedish, the novel
A Story about Mr. Silberstein, by the actor and writer Erland Josephson
Erland Josephson
Erland Josephson is a Swedish actor and author. He is best known to international audiences for his work in films directed by Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Theodoros Angelopoulos.-Biography:...
, and I Miss You, I Miss You!, a
young-adult novel by Peter Pohl
Peter Pohl
Peter Pohl, born is a Swedish author and former director and screenwriter of short films.He has received prizes for several of his books and films, as well as for his entire work....
and Kinna Gieth. He has received numerous awards for his translations,
including the American Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize
(twice), the Inger Sjöberg Translation Prize, the F. R. Scott Translation Prize, and the Richard Wilbur Prize.
Translations
- The silence afterwards. Selected poems of Rolf Jacobsen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-691-06647-7; 0-691-01424-8. Foreword by Poul Borum; Introduction by Greenwald. Parallel Norwegian and English text
- Stone fences. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986. ISBN 0-8262-0601-8. (With William Mishler.) Translation of Steingjerde, by Paal-Helge Haugen. Introduction by Greenwald. Parallel Norwegian and English text.
- The time in Malmö on the earth. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1989. ISBN 0-92042850-9. Translation of Tiden i Malmö, på jorden, by Jacques Werup. Introduction by Greenwald. English only.
- A story about Mr. Silberstein. Evanston: Northwestern University Press / Hydra Books, 1995, paperback 2001. ISBN 0-8101-1277-9; 0-8101-1910-2. Translation of En berättelse om herr Silberstein, by Erland Josephson.
- Wintering with the Light. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997. ISBN 1-55713-273-9. Translation of Det overvintra lyset, by Paal-Helge Haugen. Parallel Norwegian and English text.
- Did I know you? Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag,1997. ISBN 82-05-24866-4. Translation of 31 poems by Rolf Jacobsen. Parallel Norwegian and English text.
- I miss you, I miss you! New York: R&S Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. ISBN 978-9-129-63935-3. Translation of Jag saknar dig, jag saknar dig! by Peter Pohl and Kinna Gieth.
- Through naked branches. Selected poems of Tarjei Vesaas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-691-00896-7; 978-0-691-00897-4. Introduction by Greenwald. Parallel Norwegian and English text.
- North in the world. Selected poems of Rolf Jacobsen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-226-39035-2. Introduction by Greenwald. Parallel Norwegian and English text.