Ellen Hinsey

Guest of the ilb 2005

The poet Ellen Hinsey was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  She holds degrees in Literature from Tufts University and the Université Paris VII.  She has lived in Europe for the last twenty years, where she currently teaches on the faculties of Skidmore College's program in Paris, and the French graduate school, the Ecole Polytechnique.

Hinsey's departure from the United States coincided with a turning away from the predominantly confessional tone of contemporary American poetry.  In Europe, she found her voice through an ongoing dialogue with the disciplines of philosophy and history.  In 1996 Hinsey's first volume of poetry, »Cities of Memory« (1996) received the Yale University Series Award, the most distinguished American tribute for a poetic debut.

»Cities of Memory« is a work concerned with personal and historical time – the weaving together of individual experience with the events that make up the historical conscience at the end of the Twentieth Century.  Poetic sequences investigate, among other subjects, Freud's departure from Vienna, the morning of the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva's exile in the Paris suburb of Clamart.  The work bridges intellectual exploration and lyrical technique, and was heralded as the work of »a major new talent«.

In 2002, »The White Fire of Time« was published and was chosen for the 2002 United Poets for Peace December book selection.  It is a book-length consideration of the »Vita Contemplativa«, or the contemplative life.  Composed in three sections, the work meditates on the daily life of the body in nature and time, the role of language in mystical and ethical experience, and the journey of the soul through seasons of desire, grief and endurance.  It is a symphonic work, alternating philosophical meditation, lyric and prose.

In preparation for her next work, »The Dialogues«, Hinsey has spent time over the last three years researching at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.  This forthcoming work continues to explore the longstanding tradition of poetry as a witness to history.

Her work has appeared in many publications including »The New York Times«, »The New Yorker« and »Die Welt«.  Selections have also appeared in French, Italian, German and Serbian translation.  She has been a guest author at numerous international festivals including the Cuirt International Festival of Literature (Galway), Giornata Mondiale Della Poesia (Verona), the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie (Paris) and at the Royal Festival Hall (London).  She has been the recipient of a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, and a Lannan Foundation Award, among other honors.

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