Ron Winkler

is a German poet, writer, editor, critic, and translator living in Berlin. Born in 1973, he studied German literature and language and history at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. He founded the poetry magazine intendenzen, and was its editor for about ten years. Several of his poems have been translated into 20 languages. In the United States, his work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Boston Review, Blackbird, Atlanta Review, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. Winkler is the recipient of the 2005 Leonce and Lena Prize for poetry, Germany’s most prestigious award for emerging poets, and the 2006 Mondsee Poetry Award. In 2010, he served as a writer–in–residence in Córdoba, Argentina; the following year, in Venice, Italy. This past summer he was granted a residence scholarship at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby on Gotland, Sweden. His most recent poetry collection is Frenetische Stille (Frenetic Silence), which came out in 2010. That same year, he published a book of flash fiction, Torp. In addition to his work as a poet, Winkler has edited several anthologies: a collection of young American poets; another featuring new German voices; and, most recently, poems dealing with snow. He has translated full–length poetry collections by Billy Collins, Matthew Zapruder, G.C. Waldrep, Jeffrey McDaniel, David Lerner, Sarah Manguso, and Arielle Greenberg, as well as a novel by Forrest Gander. This interview, both conducted in German by Nancy Allison and translated by her, is the first with Winkler to appear in an English–language poetry quarterly.