Frank Judge



Frank Judge is an American poet, publisher, translator, journalist, film critic, teacher, and arts administrator. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including New Directions, The Greenfield Review, The New Orleans Review, The Bellingham Review, Miller's Pond, HazMat Review, Bitterroot, Invisible City, Blank Tape, and Writer Online. His translations have appeared Poesia verde, Rapporti and Tam-Tam (Italy), and other journals.

Career
Frank Judge declined an offer to teach at Rochester Institute of Technology to accept a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy. He spent spent over a year in Rome, where he compiled and edited material for an anthology of contemporary Italian poetry published as a special issue of the Vanderbilt Poetry Review. The volume contained his translations of poems by Sandro Penna, Danilo Dolci, Nelo Risi, Vittorio Sereni, Andrea Zanzotto, Pietro Cimatti, and others. He has also translated the work of Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach, as well as his own poetry and the work of other American poets such as John Berryman, William Heyen and Lyn Lifshin into Italian.

Judge was a contributor to and an editor of Vanderbilt Poetry Review.

Judge has been anthologized in such publications as Poets Against the War (2003), VoicesInWartime.org, Summer Songs (2004), Knocking on the Silence (2005), an anthology of poetry inspired by the Finger Lakes region of New York State, and Uncensored Songs (2007), a collection of poems honoring poet Sam Abrams; and, most recently, Liberty's Vigil: 99 Poets Among the 99% (2012), a volume dedicated to the Occupy Movement. A number of his poems have been published as broadsides, mounted art, and poem-postcards as well on several Dial-a-Poem services.

His books include Two Voices and Approximations. His poetry broadsides have been included in exhibitions in the Rochester area at such venues as the Center at High Falls Gallery, the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and the Fourwalls Gallery. He is editor and publisher of Exit Online and the Pinnacle Hill Review. Since 2003, he's been the President of Rochester Poets; in 2005 he became Director of the Rochester Poetry Workshop, which he formed from the Rochester area Meetup poetry group when Meetup announced it would begin levying a monthly fee for its previously free flagship service. In 2011, he began teaching creative writing at OASIS, the group of educational centers founded by The May Company (now part of Macy's). Since 2004, Judge has been the Rochester area organizer for Poets Against the War & Occupation and, from March 2007 to September 2009, he hosted a monthly reading series at Rochester's anti-war Peace Storefront, a program of the Peace Action & Education task force of Metro Justice of Rochester. The Storefront closed at the end of September 2009 due to lack of funding, and, when no new location materialized, the series was suspended. He remains a member of PA&E and is involved in its PeaceWorks Rochester project. Since March 2006, Judge has served as coordinator for the Western New York World Poetry Day Festival held annually at St. John Fisher College. In 2011, he became a Rochester area coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change, an annual event held in September started by poet Michael Rothenberg. In December 2008, he started the monthly series, Rochester Poets @ Lovin' Cup, a cafe which opened in the summer of 2008 in the Park Point at RIT in Henrietta, New York. The series was discontinued in 2009 when time constraints, audience mix, lack of publicity and promotion, and changing focus by the venue made an ongoing literary event unfeasible.

From August 2007 to August 2009, Judge hosted the bi-weekly Free Speech Zone series at Rochester's Mez Cafe. The Mez closed in August 2009. In October, the venue was renovated and re-opened under new management as the Tango Cafe. The Free Speech Zone resumed in November, 2009 and ran until December, 2011.

Notable relatives
Judge is a cousin of Italian-born film and television actor and Academy member Cesare Danova, and prominent Italian artist Sergio Deitinger, who paints under the name DeiTinger. He is also related to Italian novelist Alberto Moravia via his cousin's wife.