James Scully

Poet, editor, essayist, and translator James Scully was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He was the author of more than ten volumes of poetry, including The Marches (1967), which won the Lamont Poetry Award (now the James Laughlin Award); Santiago Poems (1975), about his experience as a Guggenheim fellow in Chile during Pinochet’s coup; and Angel in Flames: Selected Poems and Translations 1967–2011 (2011).
 
Scully was interested in politics, identity, and revolution, and his poetry directly engaged and challenged social constructions. He  translated several poetry collections, including Quechua Peoples Poetry (1977, with Maria A. Proser), Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound (1989, with C. John Herrington), and The Complete Plays of Sophocles: A New Translation (2011, with Robert Bagg). He was also the author of the prose collections Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice (1988) and Vagabond Flags: Serbia & Kosovo Journal, Scrapbook & Notes (2009). In the foreword to Line Break, poet Adrienne Rich noted, “James Scully's essays, like his poems, refuse to soothe or simplify, to shortchange either poetry or the imperative for social revolution.”
 
Scully was the founding editor of the Curbstone Press Art on the Line chapbook series and edited the anthology Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (1966). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His translations  won the Jenny Taine Memorial Award and the Islands & Continents Translation Award. Scully has also received the Bookbuilders of Boston Award for book cover design. He was a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut before his death in late 2020.