Susanna Lang
Poet, Translator, & Educator
Poetry
Absent
I have been missing from this year’s spring.
Witness to the winter aconite and snowdrops, the first daffodils,
but not the tulips or hyacinths.
I did not see the goldeneyes again
before they left for the north.
In Irpin, a woman waters lilies and peonies in front of her home
dismantled by bombs.
The canes of her roses are still living though they may not bloom this year.
Yesterday I made it as far as the first patch of trout lilies
beside the muddy river:
the last blooms had waited for me.
Books
LIKE THIS available from Unsolicited Press
DEAR GIRLS available from Dancing Girl Press or author
Baalbek, translation of poetry by Nohad Salameh
In the Press
I’d had Susanna Lang’s Travel Notes from the River Styx in my to-be-read pile for some time, and when I finally picked it up recently, reading it in one sitting, my first thought was that I wished I’d read it sooner. It’s just fantastic. You should all read it.. Read More
Lynn Domina,
A REVIEW A WEEK
Travel Notes from the River Styx contains some great poems that get to the emotional core of love, life and death. The poems are haunted and haunting, forcing me to read them more than once. I found the poems enjoyable and they will stay with me for a long time... I'd highly recommend this collection. Read More
Pamela Scott,
THE BOOK LOVERS BOUDOIR
Lang sets a mood of dreamy, elegiac mystery in the opening poem, “Road Trip,” with “Carla Bruni… singing Je rêve comme je respire” on the car’s speakers as the driver follows familiar roads to arrive at a motel room peopled by her dearest ghosts... Read More
Kathleen Kirk,
ESCAPE INTO LIFE
Bio
Susanna Lang was born in New York and raised in college towns where her father taught in Kansas, Michigan and Connecticut. She is the author of three full-length books of poetry and has translated the poetry of Yves Bonnefoy. Her most recent collection, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published by Terrapin Books in 2017. Earlier collections include Tracing the Lines (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013) and Even Now (The Backwaters Press, 2008) as well as a chapbook, Two by Two (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Words in Stone, her translation of poems by Yves Bonnefoy, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1976. The Origin of Language, prose poems by Yves Bonnefoy, was published by George Nama in 1979.
She has published original poems and translations in such journals as Poetry East, Little Star, December, The Baltimore Review, Prime Number Magazine, Jubilat, Comstock Review, Verse Daily and American Life in Poetry. She has won numerous awards, including a 1999 Illinois Arts Council Award, the Inkwell Poetry Competition in 2009, the Prime Number Poetry Prize in 2015, and multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize. She was a 2010 and 2015 Hambidge Fellow and received a 2011 Emerging Writer Fellowship from The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
A longtime educator in the Chicago area, she currently works as a creative writing instructor at the Chicago High School for the Arts.
For the past 35 years, she has taught literacy and literature in grades 5-12, as well as graduate level education courses at National Louis and Northeastern Illinois Universities. She has led adult poetry workshops in public libraries and for organizations such as the Illinois Writing Project, Northwest Cultural Council, Rhino Poetry Forum, Center for College Access and Success (Northeastern Illinois University), Boundless Readers and The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, MD). She has also written curriculum or consulted for the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Poetry Foundation, and ThinkCERCA.
Reviews
of Poetry
Upon entering the site, click on the above image. The review starts on page 12.
News & Events
19
Sun
March
I look forward to joining the Sunday Reading Series at the Hungry Brain (2319 W. Belmont). Watch the website for details!
24
Fri
March
Launch reading for my chapbook, Like This, at City Lit Books (2523 N. Kedzie), 6:30-7:30. Kenyatta Rogers and Cecilia Pinto will read with me.
19
Thurs
Jan
Asymptote has published six poems by Hélène Dorion in my translation.
03
Wed
Aug
Jill! is celebrating Women in Translation Month with a playlist I curated of Third Coast Translators Collective (TCTC) translators reading selections from women writers around the world, including my translation of poems from Mes forêts by Hélène Dorion.
26
Fri
Nov
Two new publications! Dear Girls, a chapbook of poems out from dancing girl press, and Baalbek, a translation from the French of Nohad Salameh, released in trilingual edition from Atelier du Grand Tétras. It will be easier for you to contact me directly for copies.
18
Fri
June
Mudlark has published my e-chapbook, Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, that revisits and revises translations I made years ago and adds new poems of mine in response. Cover art by George Nama, a friend and collaborator of Yves'.
24
Wed
Feb
Thanks to Crosswinds Poetry Journal and Margaret Gibson for awarding first prize to my poem, Inspection, which will be published in spring 2021.
19
Thurs
Jan
If you missed my reading of poems from
Self-Portraits sponsored by the Normal Public Library, you can hear it on YouTube. Thanks to Escape into Life and to The Poetry Cafe for publishing such wonderful reviews of the collection. Links on the Books page of my site.
26
Thurs
Nov
My poem "In a Dark Wood" is included in Issue 3 of Channel Magazine (Dublin), and in the video celebration of the issue launch. Listen!