J. Kates
James George "Jim" Kates (born 1945 in White Plains, New York) is an American poet, literary translator, and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation for the Selected Poems of Mikhail Yeryomin (White Pine Press, 2014). He has published three chapbooks of his own poems: Mappemonde (Oyster River Press) Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) and The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press), and a full book, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books). He is the translator of The Score of the Game and An Offshoot of Sense by Tatiana Shcherbina; Say Thank You and Level with Us by Mikhail Aizenberg; When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree and Secret Wars by Jean-Pierre Rosnay; Corinthian Copper by Regina Derieva; Live by Fire by Aleksey Porvin; Thirty-nine Rooms, by Nikolai Baitov; Genrikh Sapgir's Psalms; and Muddy River, a selection of poems by Sergey Stratanovsky. He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association, he is also the co-translator of four books of Latin American poetry.

Career 
Since 1997, with Leora Zeitlin, Kates has co-directed Zephyr Press, a non-profit literary publishing house that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia.  He is the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. He was the president of the American Literary Translators Association.

Life 
Kates grew up in Elmsford and White Plains, New York. He attended Hackley School in Tarrytown and graduated from White Plains High School in 1963. He volunteered for the Mississippi Summer Project after his freshman year at Wesleyan University in 1964, helping to implement a special court order encouraging voter registration in Panola County. In the fall of 1964, he organized a Friends of the SNCC/COFO in Paris, France, to support the work of the American civil rights movement. He returned to America in 1965 to work in Natchez, Mississippi. He later became a public school teacher, a non-violence trainer for interpersonal and political movements, and a poet and literary translator.

He is married to Helen Safronsky Kates. They have two children, Stanislav (1986) and Paula (1994).

Awards 
 1984 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry
 1995 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts
 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Project Fellowship

Published works
 Mappemonde (Oyster River Press)  
 Metes and Bounds (Accents Publishing) 
 The Old Testament (Cold Hub Press)  
 The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) 
 Muddy River (translation of poems by Sergey Stratanovsky) Carcanet Press: 2016
 Thirty-nine Rooms (translation of a poem by Nikolai Baitov) Cold Hub Press: 2015
 Selected Poems 1957-2004 (translation of poems by Mikhail Yeryomin) White Pine Press: 2014
 Psalms 1965-1966 (translation of poems by Genrikh Sapgir) Cold Hub Press: 2012
 Live by Fire (translation of poems by Aleksey Porvin) Cold Hub Press: 2011
 An Offshoot of Sense (translation of poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Cold Hub Press: 2011
 Level with Us (translation of poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Cold Hub Press: 2011
 Corinthian Copper (translation of poems by Regina Derieva) Marick Press: 2010
 Secret Wars (translation of poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Cold Hub Press: 2010
 When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree (translation of poems by Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Green Integer Press: 2009
 Contemporary Russian Poetry (translations editor) Dalkey Archive Press: 2008
 Say Thank You (translation of poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Zephyr Press: 2007
 Less Than a Meter (translation of poems by Mikhail Aizenberg) Ugly Duckling Presse: 2004
 Las Edades / The Ages (translation of poems by Ricardo Feierstein*) Colleción Poesía: 2004
 The Score of the Game (translation of poems by Tatiana Shcherbina) Zephyr Press: 2003
 Self-Portraits and Masks (translation of poems by Isaac Goldemberg*) Cross-Cultural Communications: 2002
 In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era (editor) Zephyr Press: 1999
 We, the Generation in the Wilderness (translation of poems by Ricardo Feierstein*) Ford-Brown Press: 1989
 A Voice Among the Multitudes: Jewish Poets from Latin America*, Northeastern University Libraries: 2011

Translations 
 The Score of the Game by Tatiana Shcherbina 
 An Offshoot of Sense by Tatiana Shcherbina 
 Say Thank You by Mikhail Aizenberg 
 Level with Us by Mikhail Aizenberg
 When a Poet Sees a Chestnut Tree by :fr:Jean-Pierre Rosnay
 Secret Wars by :fr:Jean-Pierre Rosnay
 Corinthian Copper by Regina Derieva
 Live by Fire by Aleksey Porvin
 Genrikh Sapgir's Psalms
 Co-translator with Stephen A. Sadow of four books on Latin American poetry

References 

1945 births
Living people
American male poets
American translators