John Brandi


John Brandi is an American poet and artist. San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman has said of Brandi:

Life

Brandi is a native of Southern California. He studied art and anthropology at California State University, Northridge, and graduated in 1965. There he met poets Jack Hirschman and Eric Barker, as well as singer Pete Seeger, who encouraged him towards social work. As a Peace Corps volunteer, he lived in Ecuador from 1966 -1968, where he worked with Quechua farmers in their struggle for land rights. In the Andes he began publishing his poems in hand-sewn mimeograph editions, a trend that preceded the alternative press movement. Returning to the United States, he protested the American War in Vietnam, moved to Alaska, then Mexico, and finally to California's Sierra Nevada mountains, where he met poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder. In 1971 a key member of the San Francisco Renaissance, David Meltzer, published Brandi's first collection of prose poems, Desde Alla. That same year, Brandi left California for New Mexico, built a hand-hewn cabin in the northern mountains, and founded Tooth of Time Books, a small press devoted to poetry.
During his early years in the American Southwest, John Brandi traveled with Japanese poet Nanao Sakaki, compiled That Back Road In, and began teaching as an itinerant poet in Poetry-in-the-Schools programs throughout the western U.S. and Alaska. In 1979 he made the first of many excursions to India and the Himalayas to retrace his father's journey as a soldier in the India-Burma Theater. An elegy for his father and a tribute to poet Nanao Sakaki were included in his book Reflections in the Lizard’s Eye: notes from the high desert. In 1980 Brandi received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.
John Brandi has remained a resident of New Mexico, where he continues his rural lifestyle. An ardent traveler, he has sought source and renewal in the geography and peoples of the American Southwest and in distant lands. He has given readings of his poetry throughout the U.S. and overseas, including venues in Paris, Kyoto, Guadalajara and northern India. He has been a guide and lecturer for university students studying in Mexico, Java and Bali. In 2007 he co-curated “Jack Kerouac and the Writer’s Life,” an exhibit at the Palace of the Governor's, Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2009 he gave the keynote address for the Haiku North America conference in Ottawa, Canada, followed by lectures at Punjab University, India, the University of California Bancroft Library, the New Mexico History Museum, and the Upaya Zen Center.

Work

As a poet, Brandi owes much to his predecessors of the Beat tradition, and to poets as diverse as Federico García Lorca and the Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho. Brandi's writing has been published both in trade and small-press editions, with noteworthy contributions in the realm of illustrated, hand-colored books printed on hand-operated presses. As a visual artist, his mixed-media paintings are enhanced with earth pigments, collage and plant dyes. He was introduced to the world of art and travel by his parents who gave him a notebook and pencils as a young boy, walked him through the Sierra Nevada meadows, encouraged him to observe keenly, draw, and write what he experienced. John Brandi's many books, published in the U.S. and India, include poetry, travel vignettes, essays, modern American haiku and haibun. A complete selection of his publications may be found at UC Berkeley Special Collections, Brown University Library, University at Buffalo Special Collections, and at the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Santa Fe, NM.

Poetry

The Great Unrest Pa'Siempre: Cuba Poems The World, the World Facing High Water In What Disappears Heartbeat Geography: Selected & Uncollected Poems Shadow Play: poems 1987-1991 Hymn for a Night Feast: poems 1979-1986 That Back Road In Narrowgauge to Riobamba Turning Thirty Poem Firebook A Partial Exploration of Palo Flechado Canyon Emptylots: Poems of Venice and L.A. Field Notes from Alaska One Week of Mornings at Dry Creek
  • ''Desde Alla''

Haiku and [haibun]

The Way to Thorong La Into the Dream Maze At It Again Seeding the Cosmos Blue Sky Ringing Cloud Pavilion Staff in Hand, Wind in Pines Water Shining Beyond the Fields One Cup and Another Empty Moon / Bellyfull: Haiku from India and Nepal. Pilgrims 2001.No Other Business Here: a Haiku Correspondence Weeding the Cosmos
  • ''That Crow That Visited Was Flying Backwards''

Stories

Reflections in the Lizard's Eye: Notes from the High Desert A Question of Journey A Question of Journey Diary from a Journey to the Middle of the World
  • ''Desde Alla''

Edited

The Unswept Path: Contemporary American Haiku Chimborazo: Life on the Haciendas of Ecuador
  • ''Dog Blue Day: Writing from the Penitentiary of New Mexico''

Translations

An Eye Through the Wall: Mexican Poetry 1970-1985
  • ''A House By Itself: Selected Haiku, Masaoka Shiki''

Poetry Awards