Biography
Michael Favala Goldman (b.1966) is a poet, jazz clarinetist and translator of Danish literature. Michael’s five books of original poetry include Small Sovereign, which won first place at the 2022 Los Angeles Book Festival. Among his seventeen translated books is Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen, which made the New York Times Best 10 Books of 2021 as book three of The Copenhagen Trilogy His work has appeared in dozens of publications including The New Yorker, Rattle, and The Harvard Review. He lives in Northampton, MA, where he has been running bi-monthly poetry critique groups in person and online since 2018.
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A Quote from Michael…
“What I feel is important about literature is that it can soften the shells around our hearts. This experience can cause us to feel more compassion for others and for ourselves.
As both a writer and a translator I create literature by embodying an emotionally significant experience or text and transmuting that into words that can resonate with the reader. My subject matter varies widely but often communicates a theme of relationship, whether estranged, precarious, aspiring, or unified.
Paramount in my work is respect for the reader. In my own writing, I strive for a concise and precise style that goes straight to the matter without excess explanation. I translate the work of writers who have gained my highest regard because they have something original and surprising to relate to.
My hope is that by exposing myself through writing as transparently as possible, I will cause my readers to feel something. Readers may be then encouraged to explore the emotion in themselves that encountering my writing has uncovered.
It is said that poetry is a prophetic act, not because poets tell the future, but because they tell the present, while other people are paying attention to other things. Through my interrogation of present experience, I hope to bridge what is mutual or universal in human experience, and give readers a sense of belonging to their own stories as well as to our shared stories.”
– Michael Favala Goldman
Booklist and Blurbs
- Who has time for this? (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020)
(Theme: Escaping and not escaping the present)
More on this book - Slow Phoenix (cyberwit, 2021)
(Theme: Reluctance to becoming who we are)
More on this book - Small Sovereign (Homestead Lighthouse, 2021)
(Theme: Power and Powerlessness)
More on this book - If you were here you would feel at home (cyberwit, 2022)
(Theme: Home, travel, and belonging)
More on this book - This May Sound Familiar (Homestead Lighthouse, 2022)
(Theme: Universality of relationship)
More on this book - Someday all of this will be yours (cyberwit, 2023)
(Theme: Inheritance and heritage)
More on this book - What Minimal Joy (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023)
(Theme: Conflict and wonder)
More on this book
What people are saying…
Michael Favala Goldman is a stealth poet. The plain language and deep meaning of his poems can reverberate to the core of your being.
– Lynette Yetter 2023 PEN Awards, Poetry Translation finalist.
Succinct and subtle, understated even, yet powerful and persuasive; one after another, the poems take the reader by quiet surprise.
– Barry DeCarli, author of Camouflage of Noise and Silence.
One-on-One with Michael Goldman
1. How and why did you learn Danish?
When I was seventeen, I traveled to Denmark with a cultural summer exchange program and fell in love with a Danish girl. We stayed in touch by writing letters, and two years later, after visiting her in Denmark again, she helped me get a summer job on a farm. To help me win over her father, I taught myself Danish by reading a Danish translation of Catcher in the Rye with a dictionary. We have been married for 33 years.
2. Congratulations on all the accolades associated with Dependency and The Copenhagen Trilogy. How did you come to translate this book that was published in Denmark fifty years ago?
Thank you, it was a thrill to see my work on the front page of the NYT Book Review. At the author, Tove Ditlevsen’s centennial, some of her books were reissued in Denmark. I have read classic Danish authors including Ditlevsen since I first learned Danish, and I saw a couple of her reissued books in the airport store as I was leaving Denmark. I picked up a GIFT without knowing what it was. After reading it, I remember placing it down on my desk and saying to myself, I think I just read a masterpiece. I was surprised to find that it had not been translated into Danish, so I immediately requested permission, applied for a grant, and off I went.
3. I see you have translated 17 books and written five original poetry collections. What came first, your poetry or translation?
I have been an occasional poetry writer since I was very little. But it was a hobby and I didn’t take it seriously until I began translating. I have been repeatedly deeply moved by Danish authors, and feel grateful to have to chance to bring them beyond the relatively small borders of Danish into a larger language. As a translator, I have to take on many voices. Eventually, I returned to my own poetry and, in a way, translated my own voices.
4. What will readers find in your poetry or your translations?
For me artistic expression is all about emotion. My job as a writer is to find the emotional center of a Danish text, or my own writing, and deliver it as cleanly and powerfully as possible. When readers delve into my work, I think they will be reminded of heartbreak and joy, grit and grace, what happens in between the moments of our lives that we often try to avoid. Sometimes I imagine they will put down the page and reflect, or sometimes just savor a great story, and want to share it.
5. What is your writing process like?
Whether it is translation or poetry or something else, I write every day. Once I have the text or idea that I plan to pursue, I meditate on the idea or phrase until I feel it centered emotionally in my heart. Then I try to allow the voice, the words to arise from that place. All communication is translation, whether it is from my own life, or from another language. It is not always totally smooth, but that is what revision is for. I have a mentor and an editor I work with to help me refine my revisions and eventually select work for a collection.
6. What do you teach?
My main field is poetry, though I have also taught translation and I taught Danish conversation for six years. I have been teaching poetry workshops for five years, twice a month. The gist of what I teach is close reading and finding the emotional center of a text. When the form and content of a work line up with its emotional message, then a piece of text becomes especially powerful. This is what I cultivate with the writers in my workshops. I also work as an editor for a small press and as a consultant for individual writers.
7. What motivates you and keeps you going?
Writing every day helps me keep my emotional door ajar. I hope that by sharing my writing with readers, they may feel more connected to the humanity in themselves and with their fellow humans. Translation connects cultures, and great writing has a way of breaking down the shells around our hearts, letting us feel more compassion for ourselves, and for the world. Sometimes a poem is what we need to feel uplifted or understood at a time of difficulty. Some of my greatest joys have been performing my poetry and live music during book events. I feel the connection of humanity in the room, and I feel grateful to bring people together in that kind of space. Having the chance to connect with people through poetry keeps me going.
