Anselm Hollo - Life and Work

Life and Work

Paavo Anselm Aleksis Hollo was born in Helsinki, Finland. His father, Juho Aukusti Hollo (1885–1967) — who liked to be known as "J. A." Hollo — was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, an essayist, and a major translator of literature into Finnish. His mother was Iris Antonina Anna Walden, a music teacher and daughter of organic chemist Paul Walden. He lived for eight years in the United Kingdom producing three children: Hannes, Kaarina, and Tamsin, with his first wife, poet Josephine Clare. He has been a permanent resident in the United States since the late 1960s, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife, artist Jane Dalrymple-Hollo.

He has published more than forty titles of poetry in the UK and in the US, in a style strongly influenced by the American beat poets.

In 1965, he performed at the "underground" International Poetry Incarnation, London. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo POETICS list elected Hollo to the honorary position of "anti-laureate", in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins to the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

Hollo has translated poetry and belles-lettres from Finnish, German, Swedish and French into English. He was one of the early translators of Allen Ginsberg into German and Finnish.

He has taught creative writing in eighteen different institutions of higher learning, including SUNY Buffalo, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 1985, he has taught in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he now holds the rank of Full Professor.

Currently, Hollo is no longer teaching courses. He has become ill, and during the summer of 2012, had brain surgery.

Several of his poems have been set into music by pianist and composer Frank Carlberg.

Poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley named their son Anselm Berrigan after Hollo.