Writer, editor, translator.
(°) – seed and other poems, a translation from the Italian of selected poems by Maria Grazia Calandrone, edited by Beppe Cavatorta. New York: Agincourt Press/Opuntia Books, 2025.
I commissioned some wooden luggage, poems by Nicholas Benson, with an Afterword by Christopher Greger and James Penner. Agincourt Press/Opuntia Books, 2024.
“Conversazione con Luigi Ballerini,” in il verri, “TRANSOCEAN (UN)LIMITED,” n. 83 (ottobre 2023).
John Florio Prize for Italian translation from the Society of Authors (UK), 2022, for My Karst and My City and Other Essays, a translation from the Italian in collaboration with Elena Coda of Il mio Carso (1912), a novel and selected essays by Scipio Slataper.
Ettaro, a translation from the Italian of essays by Pietro Bologna, Bruno De Franceschi, and Angelo Lumelli. Lugano: Artphilein, 2022.
My Karst and My City and Other Essays, a translation from the Italian in collaboration with Elena Coda, of Il mio Carso (1912), a novel and selected essays by Scipio Slataper, edited and with an introduction by Elena Coda. Toronto: Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library of University of Toronto Press, 2020.
All Over, a translation from the Italian of a book of prose and verse on boxing by Gabriele Tinti. Milano: Mimesis Edizioni, 2013.
The Arsonist, a translation from the Italian of Aldo Palazzeschi’s volume of poetry, L’Incendiario (1910). Los Angeles: Otis Books / Seismicity Editions, 2013.
Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, 2008, to support the translation of Palazzeschi’s The Arsonist (L’Incendiario).
Winter Journey, a translation from the Italian of Attilio Bertolucci’s volume of poetry, Viaggio d’inverno (1971). Parlor Press / Free Verse Editions, 2005.
“In her Serie fossile (Fossil Series), acclaimed Italian writer Maria Grazia Calandrone transforms the metaphorical spectrum connected to the idea of “fossil” by turning it – and the process necessary to create it – into the very essence of love. Love is at the core of the entire collection, as the author herself suggests: ‘Serie fossile is a poem about love, from the miracle of its birth to the agony of its end.’ Love, then, is surrender, entailing the complete opening up to the other (ready to be inhabited) and irremediable transformation, a rebirth from which there is no going back” — Beppe Cavatorta, from the Afterword
“Benson’s poems are a mixture of wit and sorrow, satire and self-reckoning, urban pastoral and epigram; they manifest themselves in a myriad of inventive forms, including experiments with line, collage, and poetic sequence-making. They are cosmopolitan, urbane, and just plain damn smart poems.” — David Wojahn
“A terrific poet, Benson’s poems range from a kind of Whitmanesque vision as he tries to visit an old Jewish graveyard in NY to intense lyrics that as he says in one poem, would ‘rescue your breaking heart.’ This is a poet and translator with a wide range of talents.” — Richard Jackson
”The scholarship and athleticism required to render this many-textured project into tonal English is nothing short of staggering. My Karst And My City is a masterwork of epic proportions, and a necessary reminder that academic translation can be linguistically vital as well as culturally important.”
— Mario Petrucci, co-judge of the John Florio Prize for translation from the Italian of the Society of Authors (UK)
“Labala
Falala
Falala
& so lala
Lalala lalala.
Certainly it’s a major risk
to write things such as this
these days, when professors wait
at every gate.”
“The luminous, uncanny precision of Nicholas Benson’s translations gives Bertolucci’s poetry a presentness that is altogether compelling.”
— Mark Rudman, author of The Rider Quintet
Nicholas Benson, son of a US diplomat, was born in West Germany in 1966 and grew up in Yugoslavia, Turkey, and the USSR. He holds a PhD in Italian (New York University, 1999) and a MFA in Writing (Vermont College of Fine Arts, 2009). He is the translator of Attilio Bertolucci’s Winter Journey (2005); Aldo Palazzeschi’s The Arsonist (2013), for which he was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship; and, with Elena Coda, Scipio Slataper’s My Karst and My City and Other Essays (2020), which was awarded the John Florio Prize by the Society of Translators (UK). Among his other shorter published translations are works by Antonia Pozzi, Paolo Lagazzi, Mario Luzi, Gabriele Tinti, and Beppe Salvia. Translations of several poets and critics are in the forthcoming anthology Those Who from Afar Look Like Flies Tome 2, edited by Luigi Ballerini and Beppe Cavatorta, and more translations of Attilio Bertolucci will be in the anthology Il Novecento, Part 1, edited by Beppe Cavatorta and Gianluca Rizzo.
(°) – seed and other poems, a volume of selected poetry translated from the Italian of Maria Grazia Calandrone, edited by Beppe Cavatorta, was published in January 2025 by Agincourt Press. His own poems and essays have been published in various journals, and a collection of poems entitled I commissioned some wooden luggage was published in October 2024 by Agincourt Press/Opuntia Books. Two poems from the volume were featured in the RAI Radio Tre program curated by Maria Grazia Calandrone, Poesia statunitense contemporanea, in March ’23. An interview with Bashaina Dumerant of Agincourt Press can be found here.
His photos past and present are linked to above & below.