I come to writing cold, asking words to bring me to heat, and vice versa. In my poems, videos, and collaborations I look for ways to catch the liveliness of words in dynamic play with the physical world, as unmediated by my will as possible. I feel my ultimate task as a writer and translator is to help keep language from ossifying—crucial work for the collective imagination.
Denise Newman is a multimedia poet and translator based in San Francisco. Her poetry collections are Future People, The New Make Believe, Wild Goods, and Human Forest, and, forthcoming, The Redesignation of Paradise. Newman is also involved in video and social practice projects that explore incongruities between perception, language and reality, and for many years she has collaborated with composers providing lyrics for choral works and songs. She has received a Creative Work Fund grant, and for her translation work, two PEN awards and two NEA Fellowships. She teaches at the California College of the Arts.