J. Kates

James George "Jim" Kates is a minor poet and a literary translator. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation and a Käpylä Translation Prize. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems: Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) and The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press) and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing). He is the translator of The Score of the Game and An Offshoot of Sense (Tatiana Shcherbina); Say Thank You and Level with Us (Mikhail Aizenberg); When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree, Secret Wars, and I Have Invented Nothing (Jean-Pierre Rosnay); Corinthian Copper (Regina Derieva); Live by Fire (Aleksey Porvin); Thirty-nine Rooms (Nikolai Baitov); Psalms (Genrikh Sapgir); Muddy River (Sergey Stratanovsky); Selected Poems 1957-2009, and Sixty Years (Mikhail Yeryomin); and Paper-thin Skin (Aigerim Tazhi). He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era.

Career Since 1997, with Leora Zeitlin, Kates has co-directed Zephyr Press, a non-profit literary publishing house that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia. He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. He was the president of the American Literary Translators Association.

Life Kates grew up in Elmsford and White Plains, New York. He attended Hackley School in Tarrytown and graduated from White Plains High School in 1963. He volunteered for the Mississippi Summer Project after his freshman year at Wesleyan University in 1964, helping to implement a special court order encouraging voter registration in Panola County. In the fall of 1964, he organized a Friends of the SNCC/COFO in Paris, France, to support the work of the American civil rights movement. He returned to America in 1965 to work in Natchez, Mississippi. He later became a public school teacher, a non-violence trainer for interpersonal and political movements, and a poet and literary translator.

He is married to Helen Safronsky Kates. They have two children, Stanislav (1986) and Paula (1994).

Awards 1984 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry 1995 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Project Fellowship 2013 Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation 2017 National Endowment for the Arts, Translation Project Fellowship 2018 Käpylä Translation Prize 2022 Der Hovanessian Prize in Translation

Published works

poetry

Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press) The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing)

translations

Sixty Years (poems by Mikhail Yeryomin) Black Widow Press: 2022 Paper-thin Skin (poems by Aigerim Tazhi) Zephyr Press: 2019 I Have Invented Nothing (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Black Widow Press: 2018 Muddy River (poems by Sergey Stratanovsky) Carcanet Press: 2016 Thirty-nine Rooms (a poem by Nikolai Baitov) Cold Hub Press: 2015 Selected Poems 1957-2004 (poems by Mikhail Yeryomin) White Pine Press: 2014 Psalms 1965-1966 (poems by Genrikh Sapgir) Cold Hub Press: 2012 A Voice Among the Multitudes: Jewish Poets from Latin America, with Stephen A. Sadow, Northeastern University Libraries: 2011 Live by Fire (poems by Aleksey Porvin) Cold Hub Press: 2011 An Offshoot of Sense (poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Cold Hub Press: 2011 Level with Us (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Cold Hub Press: 2011 Corinthian Copper (poems by Regina Derieva) Marick Press: 2010 Secret Wars (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Cold Hub Press: 2010 When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Green Integer Press: 2009 Contemporary Russian Poetry (translations editor) Dalkey Archive Press: 2008 Say Thank You (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Zephyr Press: 2007 Less Than a Meter (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Ugly Duckling Presse: 2004 Las Edades / The Ages (poems by Ricardo Feierstein, with Stephen A. Sadow) Colleción Poesía: 2004 The Score of the Game (poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Zephyr Press: 2003 Self-Portraits and Masks (poems by Isaac Goldemberg, with Stephen A. Sadow) Cross-Cultural Communications: 2002 In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era (editor) Zephyr Press: 1999 We, the Generation in the Wilderness (poems by Ricardo Feierstein, with Stephen A. Sadow) Ford-Brown Press: 1989