MAUREEN HOLM, POET & LINGUIST 

Many of us in Albany remember Maureen reading her poems at the QE2 open mic in the early 1990s. More recently, she attended the Albany Word Fest in Thatcher Park & ran a summertime program in Rensslearville. She was always interested in the Albany poetry scene. We will miss her.

--Dan Wilcox

Dear Friends,

We are saddened to learn of the death of Maureen Holm, poet and linguist, born September 4, 1951; died January 7, 2005.  I uttered a tree interupted in its reach. 

Maureen is survived by her four siblings and her partner, poet Nicholas Johnson.

Maureen Holm was a great friend to writers. She was the founder, senior essayist and articles editor of Big City Lit, the monthly literary magazine, http://www.nycbigcitylit.com.

She was a principal in PhiloPhonema, an international consortium of working professionals in the language, music, and visual arts, which produces the Lyric Recovery Festival at Carnegie Hall. Several of Maureen's arias and poem settings were performed there. Maureen's translations ranged from Eliot's The Waste Land and Martin Luther's texts for the Bach Cantatas to renderings of W. S. Merwin and James Ragan. Recent contributions of her original work in German and French appeared in the Adirondack Review, Drunken Boat, and Niederngasse. Apart from publications in many journals, her poetry honors included the 2003 Medicinal Purposes Literary Review Award, the Rogue Scholars Sublimed Award (fifth place), the Ann Stanford Award sponsored by the University of Southern California (honorable mention), and the 2002 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award (honorable mention). Essays and literary criticism appeared most recently in Paris/Atlantic, lagniappe (SUNY Buffalo), and Midnight Mind.

She also wrote novels, short stories, and plays, including verse fables. Maureen held degrees in German literature and philosophy, as well as law (JD) and international business (LLM). She frequently addressed First Amendment issues. Maureen was a featured poet, with Nicholas Johnson, at Bright Hill's Word Thursdays reading series in 2003. Word Thursdays will present a memorial reading of Maureen's works, and those about her, in the spring.