Svoboda, Terese 1950-

views updated

Svoboda, Terese 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born September 5, 1950, in Ogallala, NE; daughter of Frank B. (a judge and farmer) and Anne Marie Svoboda; married Stephen M. Bull (a filmmaker), July 18, 1981; children: Simon Deng Breidenbach Svoboda, Felix Nicholas Bull, Franklin Paul Bull. Education: University of British Columbia, B.F.A., 1973; Columbia University, M.F.A., 1978. Also attended Manhattan College, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Colorado, the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and Montreal University of Fine Arts.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Georges Borchardt, 136 East 57th St., New York, NY 10022. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, poet, and educator. McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, rare manuscript curator, 1969; University of Hawaii, distinguished visiting professor, 1992; Sarah Lawrence College, professor, 1993; professor at Williams College, 1998, San Francisco State University, 1999, and College of William and Mary, 2001. Voices and Visions (PBS series on poetry), coproducer, 1980-82; Museum of Modern Art, curator for "Between Word and Image," 1992. Video maker with work exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Berlin Film Fest, American Film Institute, and Ars Electronica, Austria. Worked way through college as a magician's assistant, a disk jockey, a rock reviewer, and a bank clerk.

MEMBER:

Poet's House (member of advisory board and founding member), PEN, Poets and Writers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Writer's Choice column award, New York Times Book Review, for Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth; Bobst Prize, for Cannibal; Iowa Prize, for Laughing Africa; PEN/Columbia translation fellow; National Endowment for the Humanities translation fellow; Jerome fellow.

WRITINGS:

Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth (translations), Greenfield Review Press (New York, NY), 1985.

All Aberration (poetry), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1985.

Laughing Africa (poetry), University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1990.

Mere Mortal (poetry), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1995.

Cannibal (novel), New York University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

A Drink Called Paradise (novel), Counterpoint Press (Washington, DC), 1999.

Trailer Girl and Other Stories (short stories), Counterpoint Press (Washington, DC), 2001.

Treason: Poems, Zoo Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002.

Tin God (novel), University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2006.

Also author of libretto for WET, a chamber opera for Death and five voices, premiered at Disney's RedCat performance space in Los Angeles, 2005. Contributor to anthologies, including O. Henry Prize Stories 2006, edited by Laura Furman. Contributor of essays, poetry, fiction, and translations to periodicals, including Atlantic, New Yorker, Paris Review, Nation, Harper's, Vogue, and Wall Street Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Terese Svoboda writes in several genres and is the author of poetry, short stories, and novels. Her poems are penned in both form and free verse. A contributor to the Readerville.com Web site noted that the author "is very interested in the current dichotomy between lyric and language" and added: "As a result of her work abroad, she often focuses on subjects beyond American experience. In particular, her long poems show the seriousness of her effort." In her fourth book of poetry, Treason: Poems, the author explores the many aspects of "treason" and the various forms that it can take, from betrayal by the government to the disloyalty of family and friends to the workings and failings of one's own body.

"Though the premise that links these poems is treason in its many natures … the poems are not without hope, or at least the anticipation of hope," wrote Literary Review contributor Nikki Moustaki of Treason. Moustaki also noted: "The logic of the imagery in Treason's poems also leaps over vast landscapes, urging the reader to slow down and pay attention." A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that "readers will … find the waters here teeming with life."

Svoboda's novel Tin God presents a story as told through the eyes of God, who happens to be a woman and likes to dress in clothes from L.L. Bean. As the novel begins, a Don Quixote-like conquistador complete with metal armor and hat is separated from his comrades and hears whispering voices of Indians as he travels through a field of very tall grass. The voices are discussing whether or not the man is a God. As the story moves forward to the twenty-first century, Pork and Jim have lost a bag of dope in the same field visited by the conquistador 500 years earlier and set out to find it with God commenting ironically on their escapades. Meanwhile, Pork's mother, Bessie, a clairvoyant, has a vision of God and of a treasure, which she tries to recover with the help of Rolf, a local bar owner. The story switches between the conquistador's search for his companions and the modern-day search for drugs and treasure.

"There is a dark possibility that binds these two stories—that God is really malevolent, and hardly forgiving," wrote Frank Haberle on the KGBBar Web site. "God doesn't want you to see above the grass. By searching for a way out, you trifle with God. And if you trifle with God, God's going to trifle with you." Carol Haggas, writing in Booklist, called Tin God a "fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory" and "a fanciful yet cautionary tale." A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the author "both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose." Mariya Gusev wrote in the Literary Review: "It is Svoboda's handling of the characters, who are at once mythological, human, and animal, as well as her imaginative use of language, which borders on, and intersects the poetic, that's most attractive about Tin God." In her review in the Library Journal, Lisa Nussbaum referred to Tin God as a "funny romp."

Svoboda once told CA: "I came of age in the powerful, wonderful Sixties…. The University of British Columbia granted me a B.F.A. with honors in both fine arts and writing and I spent a year in the Columbia M.F.A. program until I was awarded a grant from PEN/ Columbia to learn Nuer. On my way to Africa, I spent six months in the Pacific, ostensibly to document life in Pukapuka—but the boat never came. I translated Pukapukan songs in Pue, in Rarotonga instead. I then travelled to Africa and spent a year filming/translating in one of the most remote parts of the continent, the South Sudan. Total immersion in such foreign cultures widened my perspective on what literature, both oral and written, can be. Returning, I was a single mother on food stamps trying to finish my translations with an NEH grant. I went into film, producing documentaries such as the thirteen-part PBS series, Voices and Visions. The death of my first child made me re-evaluate my direction, to emphasize my artistic rather than administrative abilities. I then began to publish my collections and direct and produce poetry videos which have been shown internationally, and culminated in my curating a show for the Museum of Modern Art titled ‘Between Word and Image’ on the relationship between the two media. My themes have been the usual: sex and death set in a mystical, Rothko-empty Nebraska, concrete New York or the exotic everywhere else."