John Oliver Simon is a fifth-generation Californian born in New York City in 1942. He has been exploring Latin America and translating its poetry for two decades. Caminante, written during a nine-month voyage south of the border in the mid-nineties, was published by Creative Arts Book Company in 2002. Gary Snyder writes: "This is a major poem, gritty and elegant, hard-earned, oriented by stars and late night conversations on the long road."

Ghosts of the Palace of Blue Tiles, a chapbook of translations of the wonderful young Mexican poet Jorge Fernández Granados, will be published by Tameme Press in January, 2008. To read an interview with John Oliver Simon about his work, as a translator, go to Tameme's website at:

www.tameme.org

Translations of Light, a selection of Simon's poems in Spanish and English, was published by Entrelíneas Editores in 2003 as a double book with Bacantes, the poems of Mexican poet Elsa Cross with Simon's translations. Velocities of the Possible, his translations of the great Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (Red Dragonfly Press) won him a 2001 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Son Caminos, a selection of his poems in Spanish, was published by Hotel Ambosmundos in Mexico City in 1997. His earlier books include Lord Of the House Of Dawn (Bombshelter Press, 1991), Neither Of us Can Break the Other's Hold: Poems For My Father (Shameless Hussy Press, 1981) and Roads To Dawn Lake (Oyez, 1968).

Recent on-line publications include Thunder Sandwich: www.thundersandwich.com

and MiPoesias:

Mi Poesias Volume 19 Issue 2

John Oliver Simon is Artistic Director of Poetry Inside Out (PIO), a project of the Center for Art in Translation. He conducts long-term residencies in second through eighth-grade classrooms in the East Bay, focusing on the translation of great Spanish-language poetry, together with writing poetry inspired by this process.