Review
"Rogers's ten illustrations supply insight into her treatment of the translation... derived from Anglo-Saxon art... yet with a contemporary edge..." -- Chelsea Review.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
More than 250 of Bertha Rogers's poems appear in journals and anthologies, and the collections Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2010), Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries (Six Swans Artists Editions, NY, 2005); The Fourth Beast (chapbook, Snark Press, IL, 2004); A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press, Maryland Poetry Review Chapbook Contest Winner, 2000); Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen, NY 1991). Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was published in 2000 (Birch Brook Press, NY), and her translation of the riddle-poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, will be published in 2010 (Birch Brook Press, NY).
In 2002 she received a Ludwig Vogelstein Grant for poetry and visual art; and in 2006 she was the recipient of an AE Ventures Grant for excellence in both poetry and visual art and for contributions to the field through the not-for-profit literary press and center she founded in 1992, http://www.brighthillpress.org at Bright Hill Literary Center in Treadwell, NY. The organization is distinguished for its reading series, Word Thursdays; its poetry publishing program, Bright Hill Press; its children and high-school literary programs, and its word-and-image exhibits, as well as its 10,000-volume humanities library. The organization also developed and administers, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York State Literary website and print map, http://www.nyslittree.org. She has served as a judge for local, regional, and NY state NEA Poetry Outloud Contests, and she was a member of the selection committee for the first New York Writers Hall of Fame.
Her word and image works have been shown in hundreds of juried and solo exhibits throughout the US and Europe and are collected in the Harry Ransom Archive at the University of Texas and other private and public collections. In 2009 she was awarded a DEC grant for her interdisciplinary exhibit "Riddle Me This: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems Translated & Illuminated"; the show was at DCHA Museum, Hanford Mills Museum, and the WH Adams Bookstore; it is on tour and being shown through April at the Downtown Writer's Center GallerY, Syracuse.
In 2007 Rogers received the 2007 Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award from Partners for Arts Education and the Association of Teaching Artists in New York. She serves as program director for the New York State Literary Web Site, nyslittree.org, publisher of the first Literary Map of New York State (2005), in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, and she is a member of the New York State Writers in the Schools Panel. Her web site is http://bertharogers.com.
