Introduction by Lyn Hejinian

Lyn Hejinian is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her most recent published books of poetry are Saga / Circus (Omnidawn, 2008) and A Border Comedy (Granary Books, 2001). The University of California Press published a collection of her essays, titled The Language of Inquiry, in 2000. Hejinian is also actively involved in collaboratively composed works, the most recent examples of which include a major collection of poems by Hejinian and Jack Collom titled Situations, Sings (Adventures in Poetry, 2008). Other collaborative projects include a work entitled The Eye of Enduring undertaken with the painter Diane Andrews Hall and exhibited in 1996; a composition entitled Qúê Trân with music by John Zorn and text by Hejinian; two mixed media books (The Traveler and the Hill and the Hill and The Lake) created with the painter Emilie Clark; the award-winning experimental documentary film Letters Not About Love, directed by Jacki Ochs; and The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, co-written with nine other poets. She founded the Solidarity Alliance at UC-Berkeley (an alliance of faculty, students, workers, staff, and unions) and has been active in the fight to protect students rights to an accessible higher education, workers rights to dignity and job security, faculty rights to freedom of expression and diversity in their classrooms. She is currently serving as a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, and she is a recipient of a 2009-10 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Nonprofits & Activism

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• Solidarity Reading
• Berkeley Poetry Review
• BPR
• Lyn Hejinian