Poet, translator, and editor Neil Aitken reads Lee Herrick’s “Stars,” from Scar and Flower, plus his own poems “Alpha 60 Speaks of Fear,” from Babbage’s Dream and “After,” from a manuscript in process.
Neil Aitken is a Canadian writer, translator, and librettist of Chinese and Scottish descent. He is the author of two books of poetry, Babbage’s Dream and The Lost Country of Sight, which won the Philip Levine Prize. His poetry chapbook, Leviathan, was an Elgin Prize winner for Sci Fi Poetry. Individual poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Radar Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and have been anthologized, translated into Dutch and Chinese, and turned into contemporary art song. He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review, curator of Have Book Will Travel, and co-director of De-Canon: A Visibility Project. He holds both an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside and a PhD in literature & creative Writing from USC, and is also a past Kundiman Fellow. He currently lives in Canada where he continues to work as a creative writing coach and manuscript editor. (www.neil-aitken.com)