Dan Bellm
Dan Bellm
Dan Bellm lives in Berkeley, California. His five books of poems include Counting (Finishing Line Press, 2023), Deep Well (Lavender Ink, 2017), and Practice (Sixteen Rivers, 2008), winner of a 2009 California Book Award. Recent translations include Central American Book of the Dead, by Balam Rodrigo (FlowerSong Press, 2023), Speaking in Song, by Pura López Colomé (Shearsman Books, 2017), and The Song of the Dead, by Pierre Reverdy (Black Square Editions, 2016), winner of an Artist’s Fellowship in Translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught literary translation and poetry in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles, and at New York University. Dan’s personal website is at: www.danbellm.com.
Practice
“Reading Dan Bellm’s poems, I think: This is blessing. I think of Auden saying, ‘In the deserts of the heart / Let the healing fountain start.’ I am in awe of how Bellm’s poems perform a dance with and against Holy Scripture. And I keep coming back to his lines about ‘the way the body addresses the soul / lending it shape / lending it comfort and sorrow.’ Practice is like a long prayer of wonder, gratitude, pain and loss and tenderness.” –Alicia Ostriker
Dan’s book Practice has won the 2009 Silver Medal in Poetry as part of the California Book Awards given by the Commonwealth Club of California.
Practice is on The Virginia Quarterly Review’s list of the Top 10 Poetry Books of 2008.