Anselm Hollo

Anselm Hollo was born on April 12, 1934, in Helsinki, Finland. He wrote more than thirty books, including Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence: New and Selected Poems 1965–2000 (Coffee House Press, 2001), which received the San Francisco Poetry Center’s Book Award for 2001, and the essay collection Caws & Causeries: Around Poetry and Poets (La Alameda Press, 1999)

Hollo’s work has been widely anthologized and translated into Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, and Swedish. His translation of Pentii Saarikoski’s Trilogy: The Dance Floor on the Mountain, Invitation to the Dance, The Dark One’s Dances (La Alameda Press, 2003) received the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. He was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, two grants from The Fund for Poetry, and the Government of Finland’s Distinguished Foreign Translator’s Award.

A native of Helsinki, he lived in the United States since 1967, teaching poetics and translation at various colleges and universities. He was a professor of writing and poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Hollo died in Boulder on January 29, 2013.