bio

Martial, Latin in full Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 40 – c. 103), was born in the Roman colony on the Iberian peninsula in present-day Spain. He made his way to Rome and chronicled courtly life with epigrams, some of which were bitingly satirical, and others of which were clearly poems-for-hire and occasional verse likely commissioned or written with the anticipation of patronage in return. As the winds of favor shifted, he returned to his native Iberia, where he died.

Mark S. Bauer’s poems have appeared in various literary journals and two chapbooks: Imperial Days (Robert Barth Publishing, 2002), a chapbook of epigrams, and The Gnarled Man Rises (Scienter Press, 2005), a chapbook of lyrics. He edited the anthology A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, & Addiction (Oxford, 2009), and is on the psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430) was the daughter of the official astrologer to the French court, who gave her the same education that a son would have received. When her husband died of plague, leaving her a widow with three children at the age of 25, she began a career of writing, both prose and poetry, which marks her as a first European woman to support herself entirely by her pen.

Maryann Corbett’s third book of poetry, Mid Evil, won the 2014 Richard Wilbur Award and is forthcoming from The Evansville Press. Her poems, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared widely in journals in print and online and in a variety of anthologies and have also won the Lyric Memorial Award and the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.

José Luis Puerto (b. 1953) was born in the village of La Alberca, in the Sierra de Francia of Salamanca Province. Graduating from the University of Salamanca with a degree in Romance Philology, he served as secretary to Rafael Alberti. In addition to his many volumes of poetry, he has edited several anthologies, translated Portuguese poetry, and produced works of ethnography focusing primarily on folk legends of Northern Spain. He has taught in Sevilla, Segovia and León, where he now resides with his wife María.

Michael Bradburn-Ruster, a native of Carmel, California, has published poetry, fiction, translations, and scholarly essays in international journals including Able Muse, Sacred Web, Cincinnati Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Perigee, Broken Bridge Review, Marginalia, Berkeley Poetry Review, Rain City Review, Damazine (Syria), and Antigonish Review. He is a frequent contributor to Poetry Salzburg Review, and was a featured reader at the Monterey Bay Poetry Festival.

William Dunbar (c. 1456 – 1520) trained as a Franciscan novice in addition to studying at the University of St Andrews, Oxford, and Paris. He served as an ambassador and court poet of King James IV, for whom his work epitomized the ideals of the “Northern Renaissance.” His most famous work, “Lament for the Makaris” eulogizes twenty-four early Scots/English poets including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Barbour, Blind Harry, and Robert Henryson.

William Fowler (1560 – 1612) was a Protestant spy in Paris before returning to Scotland to become a minister and, later, moving to London to serve as secretary to Queen Anne. Besides composing original work, he also translated widely from the Italian masters such as Petrarch and Castiglione. His “Sonet: In Orknay” utilizes the rhyme scheme popularized by Fowler’s English contemporary, Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599), thus representing Fowler’s quick talent for absorbing both classical and current trends in literature.

Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – 1522) represented, along with William Dunbar and Robert Henryson, the flowering of the golden age of the Northern Renaissance in Scotland. Douglas studied for the priesthood and traveled widely, absorbing both contemporary and classical virtues and resources. Completed in 1513, his monumental translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was the first complete verse rendition of a classical text to be produced in Scotland.

Kent Leatham holds an MFA in poetry from Emerson College and a BA in poetry from Pacific Lutheran University. His translations of medieval/Renaissance Scots-language poetry have appeared or are forthcoming from InTranslation, Rowboat, Anomalous Press, and Ezra. His original poetry has appeared in dozens of journals nationwide, such as Ploughshares, Fence, Zoland, and Poetry Quarterly. Previously a poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, Kent currently teaches at California State University Monterey Bay.