Background
Beatrix Gates grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1981, both of her parents died.
Beatrix Gates, designer, editor, educator, publishing consultant, librettist, translator, writer, author, and poet.
Beatrix Gates, designer, editor, educator, publishing consultant, librettist, translator, writer, author, and poet.
Beatrix Gates, designer, editor, educator, publishing consultant, librettist, translator, writer, author, and poet.
Beatrix Gates, designer, editor, educator, publishing consultant, librettist, translator, writer, author, and poet.
One Morgan Pl, Yellow Springs, OH 45387, United States
Beatrix Gates received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from Antioch College.
1 Mead Way, Bronxville, NY 10708, United States
Beatrix Gates received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.
designer editor educator consultant librettist translator writer author poet
Beatrix Gates grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1981, both of her parents died.
Beatrix Gates received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from Antioch College in 1973, and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 1984. She studied under Jean Valentine at Sarah Lawrence College.
In San Francisco, Beatrix Gates was captured by the Book Arts/Poetry scene and put together her first book of poems, Native Tongue, while at Antioch College. In 1973, she designed, printed, and published Native Tongue under the Hopalong press imprint. She went to New York in 1980 to met Jane Cooper, Grace Paley, and Eva Kollisch.
Her poetry collections include Dos (Finishing Line Press), called by Jan Heller Levi, "the most moving, complex and important sequence of love poems I have read since Adrienne Rich's 1977 "Twenty-One Love Poems." In the Open also received a warm welcome. Ten Minutes earned praise from Publisher's Weekly: "Gates takes seriously both the daily news, with its constant abuses of power, and art's power to create news that stays news."
Working with Electa Arenal, Gates translated contemporary Spanish poet Jesús Aguado's The Poems of Vikram Babu, written in the voice of a 17th-century Hindu mystic. In a Poets House program in New York, Aguado, Arenal, and Gates celebrated The Poems of Vikram Babu and discussed translation. In another collaboration, as conceiver and librettist of "The Singing Bridge," Gates and composer Anna Dembska received support from the NEA, LEF, and Davis Foundations and Maine Community Fund for the opera's premiere produced by Maine's Stonington Opera House.
Gates has published poetry and translations in The Kenyon Review, The Dirty Goat, Sirena, Tarpaulin Sky, Anthem, Bloom, and Tupelo Quarterly; non-fiction in A Woman Like That, and her essay on poet Jane Cooper - in University of Michigan's "Under Discussion" series. She has been a returning fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Artist-in-Residence at Canada's Quest University.
As Founder of Granite Press (1975-1989), she published Grace Paley's first book of poetry, Leaning Forward, and the bilingual IXOK AMAR.GO: Central American Women Poets for Peace. Granite Press began as a letterpress print shop where Gates designed and printed jobs and limited edition poetry broadsides and chapbooks. Gates also edited the collection The Wiki Good: Lesbian Photographs and Writings on Love. The anthology includes poetry and essays written by authors such as Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Kate Rushin, Audre Lorde, and Pat Califia. It also includes photographs by artists such as Berenice Abbott, Luz Maria Gordillo, and Zoe Leonard, Lucy Winer, and Barbara Hammer. She created the LGBTQ bookstore A Different Light's Poetry Series in New York. She continues to promote poetry in many community settings. In recent time, she has initiated SIDELINES/ In Translation Series: collaborations from the world in more than one language for The Cannery at South Penobscot including programming on the Long Poem, Reading & Conversation with award-winning Master of Fine Arts in Writing alumnus Julia Bouwsma (on Midden) & Beatrix Gates (on Good Seeing: Poem of the Full Sky). Gates serves on the Board of The Cannery. The Cannery at South Penobscot, located just off of a quintessential Maine coast tidal inlet and housed in a former canning factory straddling the Winslow Stream, presents contemporary experimental art with a focus on sound, music, performance, and the word. There are performance spaces, a large library and reading room, a garden, a greenhouse and hen-house, a bassoon-making workshop and studio, and several thousand square feet of studio, workshop, and raw space.
Beatrix Gates has taught writing and literature at New York University, Bedford Hills Correctional facility, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City College of New York, Colby, Hampshire, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, The Writers Voice, Maine Maritime Academy and in the Maine Humanities Council Literature and Medicine program. She is a long-time member of the Goddard MFA faculty. She lives in Brooksville, Maine where she has collaborated on Poetry & Masks with weaver & farmer Ron King for the Farm/Arts Exchange, published poems in the local magazine Afterthought.