Otto Laske was born in what is now West Poland (Wroclaw/Breslau) three years before the onset of World War II. His first poetry emerged in German at age 15, perhaps as a result of war trauma and the return of his father from Russian prison camps when he was 11. After studies in music, the social sciences, and philosophy (Frankfurt School 1956-66), Otto came to the U.S. as a Fulbright student in music composition at New England Conservatory in 1966. Living in the U.S. led him at age 32 to writing in English, which he continued into the middle 1990s. He turned from music to the visual arts when coming to Gloucester, MA, in 2010.
Otto Laske’s poetic work consists of a large collection of German poems called “Silesian Word Smithy” (Schlesische Sprachschmiede) for which he is presently negotiating a contract with a publisher in Germany. His English poetry comprises four collections of over 100 poems called — from earlier to later — Tremblings, Untold Harmonies, Karman Poems, and Renewal by Fire. Pieces from these collections have been published in multi-lingual journals such as Osiris since the early nineties.
Otto’s writing practice was originally influenced by German expressionism (Gottfried Benn, Paul Celan). In English, it was open to many influences including algorithmic “sentence generators” in the 1990s. His artistic output is now part of the “Otto Laske Archive” comprising music compositions, animations, digital paintings and drawings at Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.
Otto’s reading starts with a few German originals and their translations and continues with selected pieces from his four English poetry collections.
Zvi A. Sesling, Brookline, MA Poet Laureate, has published poetry in numerous magazines both in print and online in ten countries. Among the publication credits are: Slant, Midstream, Main Street Rag, Prosopisia (India), Ibbetson St., Saranac Review, New Delta Review, The Chaffin Journal, Green Door (Belgium), Voices Israel (Israel) and Levure Litteraire (France). He has won several poetry prizes in Israel and was a featured poet in the Tenth Annual Jewish Poetry Festival and at First Light Night in Brookline, MA. His poetry was used in the Spring Rain Poetry Festival on Cyprus in 2012. Sesling reviews for the Boston Small Press & Poetry Scene, is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review. He has been a featured reader in various venues in the Boston area and San Diego, and in the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and the National Boston Poetry Festival. Sesling has done readings on local cable television and radio stations and was selected by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish to read at the New England PEN Discovery Reading. He is author of War Zones, which is nominated for Mass Center for the Book Poetry Award, The Lynching of Leo Frank, which was nominated for the National Jewish Poetry Book Award, Fire Tongue and King of the Jungle, as well as two chapbooks, Love Poems From Hell and Across Stones of Bad Dreams. He has taught at Suffolk University, Emerson College and Boston University. He lives in Chestnut Hill, MA with his wife Susan J. Dechter.