James George "Jim" Kates is a minor poet and a literary translator. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation and a Käpylä Translation Prize. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems: Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) and The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press) and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing). He is the translator of The Score of the Game and An Offshoot of Sense (Tatiana Shcherbina); Say Thank You and Level with Us (Mikhail Aizenberg); When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree, Secret Wars, and I Have Invented Nothing (Jean-Pierre Rosnay); Corinthian Copper (Regina Derieva); Live by Fire (Aleksey Porvin); Thirty-nine Rooms (Nikolai Baitov); Psalms (Genrikh Sapgir); Muddy River (Sergey Stratanovsky); Selected Poems 1957-2009, and Sixty Years (Mikhail Yeryomin); and Paper-thin Skin (Aigerim Tazhi). He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era.

Career

Since 1997, with Leora Zeitlin, Kates has co-directed Zephyr Press, a non-profit literary publishing house that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia. He is the translation editor of ''Contemporary Russian Poetry'', and the editor of ''In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era''. He was the president of the American Literary Translators Association.

Life

Kates grew up in

Elmsford Elmsford is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. Roughly one square mile, the village is fully contained within the borders of the town of Greenburgh. As of the 2010 census, th ...

and

White Plains, New York White Plains is a city in and the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is an inner suburb of New York City, and a commercial hub of Westchester County, a densely populated suburban county that is home to about one milli ...

. He attended

Hackley School Hackley School is a private college preparatory school located in Tarrytown, New York, and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Founded in 1899 by a wealthy philanthropist, Frances Hackley, the school was intended to be a Unitar ...

Tarrytown Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, approximately north of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on th ...

and graduated from

White Plains High School White Plains High School is a high school in the White Plains Public Schools system of White Plains, New York, United States. Built in 1962, it sits on 75 acres and has been expanded. It was selected by the U.S. Department of Education as a Sc ...

in 1963. He volunteered for the Mississippi Summer Project after his freshman year at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

in 1964, helping to implement a special court order encouraging voter registration in Panola County. In the fall of 1964, he organized a Friends of the

SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emer ...

COFO The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations operating in Mississippi. COFO was formed in 1961 to coordinate and unite voter registration and other civil rights activities in the st ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France, to support the work of the American civil rights movement. He returned to America in 1965 to work in

Natchez, Mississippi Natchez ( ) is the only city in and the county seat of Adams County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 14,520 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia, Louisiana, Natchez was ...

. He later became a public school teacher, a non-violence trainer for interpersonal and political movements, and a poet and literary translator. He is married to Helen Safronsky Kates. They have two children, Stanislav (1986) and Paula (1994).

Awards

* 1984 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry * 1995 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts * 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Project Fellowship * 2013 Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation * 2017 National Endowment for the Arts, Translation Project Fellowship * 2018 Käpylä Translation Prize * 2022 Der Hovanessian Prize in Translation

Published works

poetry * ''Mappemonde'' ( Oyster River Press) * ''Metes and Bounds'' (Accents Publishing) * ''The Old Testament'' (Cold Hub Press) * ''The Briar Patch'' ( Hobblebush Books) * ''Places of Permanent Shade'' (Accents Publishing) translations * ''Sixty Years'' (poems by Mikhail Yeryomin) Black Widow Press: 2022 * ''Paper-thin Skin'' (poems by Aigerim Tazhi) Zephyr Press: 2019 * ''I Have Invented Nothing'' (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Black Widow Press: 2018 * ''Muddy River'' (poems by Sergey Stratanovsky) Carcanet Press: 2016 * ''Thirty-nine Rooms'' (a poem by Nikolai Baitov) Cold Hub Press: 2015 * ''Selected Poems 1957-2004'' (poems by Mikhail Yeryomin) White Pine Press: 2014 * ''Psalms 1965-1966'' (poems by Genrikh Sapgir) Cold Hub Press: 2012 * ''A Voice Among the Multitudes: Jewish Poets from Latin America'', with Stephen A. Sadow, Northeastern University Libraries: 2011 * ''Live by Fire'' (poems by Aleksey Porvin) Cold Hub Press: 2011 * ''An Offshoot of Sense'' (poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Cold Hub Press: 2011 * ''Level with Us'' (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Cold Hub Press: 2011 * ''Corinthian Copper'' (poems by Regina Derieva) Marick Press: 2010 * ''Secret Wars'' (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Cold Hub Press: 2010 * ''When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree'' (poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Green Integer Press: 2009 * ''Contemporary Russian Poetry'' (translations editor) Dalkey Archive Press: 2008 * ''Say Thank You'' (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Zephyr Press: 2007 * ''Less Than a Meter'' (poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Ugly Duckling Presse: 2004 * ''Las Edades / The Ages'' (poems by Ricardo Feierstein, with Stephen A. Sadow) Colleción Poesía: 2004 * ''The Score of the Game'' (poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Zephyr Press: 2003 * ''Self-Portraits and Masks'' (poems by Isaac Goldemberg, with Stephen A. Sadow) Cross-Cultural Communications: 2002 * ''In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era'' (editor) Zephyr Press: 1999 * ''We, the Generation in the Wilderness'' (poems by Ricardo Feierstein, with Stephen A. Sadow) Ford-Brown Press: 1989 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kates, J. 1945 births Living people American male poets American translators