Aliki Barnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. Her books of poems are Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It (Sheep Meadow, 2002), a National Books Critics Circle Notable Book, Madly in Love (Carnegie-Mellon, 1997), Windows in Providence (Curbstone, 1981), and The Real Tin Flower (which was introduced by Anne Sexton and was published by Macmillan in 1968, when she was twelve years old). Her translation, The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy came out with W.W. Norton in 2006. In 2007, Changing Rapture: Emily Dickinsons Poetic Development appeared with University Press of New England. She has two books of poems forthcoming: Dr. God, Dear Dr. Heartbreak: New and Selected Poems (the Sheep Meadow Press, 2009) and Bright Body (White Pine Press, 2010). Barnstone spent the fall of 2006 in Greece as a Senior Fulbright Scholar. Her project was to write a sequence of poems, "Eva's Voice," in the voice of an imaginary poet, Eva Victoria Perera, a Sephardic Jew from Thessaloniki, who survives the Holocaust. She is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She and Scott Cairns launched the Summer Seminars in Greece the summer of 2008.

The Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri: http://creativewriting.missouri.edu/

The Summer Seminars in Greece: http://greeceseminar.missouri.edu/

Aliki's photos by

Katherine Dumas

Barnstone was educated at Brown University (A.B. and M.A.), Middlebury Language School, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D.) She has taught at Beloit College, Marquette University, Bucknell University, the University of South Dakota, the Prague Summer Seminar, and was writer-in-residence at Villanova University. Currently she is Professor in the Department of English’s International MFA Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Barnstone, who is half-Greek, lives with her daughter, Zoe. They live in Greece in the summer and in Las Vegas during the school year.  She has traveled abroad in Spain, Italy, China, Tibet, Burma, Nepal, Katmandu, Mexico, Guatemala, England, Holland, and elsewhere.
 

"All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstone's poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most--shall we call her her master--that Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul. Once you understand this, you begin to see the connection. It piles up after that. In Barnstone, (too) the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet."
— Gerald Stern

"What razzmatazz! What brains! What beauty! Aliki Barnstone's poems are a delight, sexy and smart, coursing deeper than we might know to go. And there the poet — unabashed! — finds what poetry must do: 'push out the air and O of mystery from our throats.'"
— Alan Michael Parker

Publications

The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy: A New Translation by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Aliki Barnstone. Published by W.W. Norton, 2006.

Blue Earth: Poems by Aliki Barnstone.  Published by Iris Press, 2004.  iris press

Wild With It: Poems. Published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2002.  amazon.com

The Shambhala Anthology of Women's Spiritual Poetry. Aliki Barnstone. Published by Shambhala in 2002.
amazon.com

Voices of Light: Spiritual and Visionary Poems by Women around the World, from Ancient Sumeria to Now. Published by Shambhala in 1999. amazon.com         (reprinted as The Shambhala Anthology of Women's Spiritual Poetry)

Trilogy by H. D.. Published by New Directions in 1998. amazon.com

Madly in Love. Published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1997. amazon.com

The Calvinist Roots of Modern America. Published by University Press of New England in 1997. amazon.com

A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now. Published by Schocken Books in 1992. amazon.com

The Real Tin Flower: Poems about the World at Nine. Published by Crowell-Collier Press in 1968. amazon.com

Links

Aliki's Constantine Cavafy translations featured at Poetry Daily, at The Drunken Boat, and at The Blue Moon Review

Aliki's Hart Crane essay at the Electronic Poetry Review

Aliki's poetry featured at poetrymagazine.com, at The Drunken Boat, at The Drunken Boat again, at The Drunken Boat yet again, at Exquisite Corpse, at Poetry Daily, and at The Blue Moon Review, Aliki's poem, "Sky Burial."

Aliki's Emily Dickinson article at the Drunken Boat

Aliki's Poetry Santa Cruz Interview