Yuyutsu Sharma to speak at William Seaton’ s Book Launch at Seligmann Center

William Seaton will read his translations of Dada poetry and his own original Dada-influenced works in a program that will also feature his editor, leading Nepali/Indian poet Yuyutsu Ram Dass Sharma.  The event will take place at 3:30 on Sunday, December 9 at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, 23 White Oak Drive, Sugar Loaf, New York.  Books by both authors will be available, including Seaton’s just-published Dada Poetry: An Introduction.  Admission is free.

Seaton’s book includes translations of four German Dada poets along with an introduction and essays, including a meditation on the future of the avant-garde.  Seaton’s translations of Dada poets have appeared earlier in Chelsea, Maintenant, Mad Blood, Read and Destroy, and the Adirondack Review.   Seaton’s own poetry has been published in the volumes Spoor of Desire: Selected Poems, Tourist Snapshots, and Cold Water.   His poetry, reviews, translations, and essays have recently appeared in Poetry Flash, Chiron Review, Adirondack Review, Gander Press Review, Burp, Heaven Bone, and Maintenant.

An advocate of the public performance of poetry, Seaton has, throughout his life, participated in numerous events joining words with theater and visual art including work on 60s “happenings,” participation with the Cloud House guerilla poets in San Francisco during the 70s, and recent Surreal Cabarets of performance art at the Center in Sugar Loaf.  He has read as well in San Francisco, New York, London, Prague, and Kathmandu.

He directs the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series, is co-founder and president of the Northeast Poetry Center (www.collegeofpoetry.com), and posts five essays, literary and familiar, every month at williamseaton.blogspot.com.

Sharma’s work as an editor for Nirala is perhaps the least of his roles.  He is one of the most distinguished poets of Nepal.  Of his many poetry collections, the more recent include Milarepa’s Bones, Hunger of Our Huddled Huts, The Lake Fewa & a Horse;  Space Cake Amsterdam, & Other Poems from Europe and America, and Around Annapurna.  Sharma has translated and edited several anthologies of contemporary Nepali poetry in English.  Though much of his work is securely grounded in the Himalayan landscape, he is a true cosmopolitan who regularly reads in Europe and the USA as well as throughout Asia.  His poetry has been translated into German, French, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch.

He is the recipient of many prestigious grants, including awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Academy of Letters (New Delhi), Ireland Literary Exchange, and the Trubar Foundation (Slovenia).  Sharma’s book of translations, Roaring Recitals: Five Nepali Poets, was nominated by the Library of Congress as best book of the year from Asia in 2001.

More information and samples of poetry are available on Sharma’s websites  www.yuyutsu.de and yuyutsurdsharma.blogspot.com.

     For several years the Seligmann Center for the Arts has been sponsoring events including shows of contemporary and historic art in honor of Surrealist artist Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette whose estate houses the Center as well as the Orange County Citizen’s Foundation and the Orange County Arts Council.

     Contact William Seaton  at seaton@frontiernet.net for further information.

William Seaton is a well-known American scholar and poet.  Seaton is author of Spoor of Desire (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Tourist Snapshots (CCMarimbo, 2008), andCold Water (Monkey’s Press, 1999).  His poetry, reviews, translations, and essays have recently appeared in Poetry Flash, Chiron Review, Gander Press Review, Wordsmith,Edison Review, Home Planet News, Heaven Bone, and Chronogram.

Also known for his translations of ancient Greek lyrics and medieval troubadours, Seaton was educated in the University of Illinois’ English Department and the University ofIowa’s Comparative Literature Program including work in translation under Anselm Hollo and Stavros Deligiorgis in the Translation Workshop.  He has received such academic honors as the Helen Fairall Scholarship Award and the Ada Louise Ballard Fellowship in the Humanities.

His scholarly articles concern topics ranging from a medieval mystic to African American oral rhymed narratives, and his teaching experience is equally broad, including positions at Long Island and Adelphi Universities, a New York state prison, and high school in the Niger Delta of West Africa.

For decades Seaton has translated the poets of the early twentieth century Dada movement as well as engaging in Dada-inspired performance events beginning with “happenings” in the 60s, through the guerilla poetry of Cloud House in the 70s, and recent Surreal Cabarets at the Seligmann Center for the Arts.  Some of these translations of twentieth century German Dada poets have been published in periodical form in Chelsea, Adirondack Review, Read and Destroy, Maintenant, and Mad Blood.

He directs the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series in New York’s Hudson Valley, heads the Northeast Poetry Center and its College of Poetry(www.collegeofpoetry.com), and posts five essays, literary and familiar, every month at williamseaton.blogspot.com.