John M. Ridland

John M. Ridland is an English poet, academic, and translator.

Life
Of Scottish ancestry, Ridland was born in London in 1933, but has lived most of his life in California. He taught writing and literature in the English Department and the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for over 40 years.

His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Spectrum, The Nation, New Zealand Books, Quadrant (Australia), River Styx, Solo, Askew, Parnassus, and The Hungarian Quarterly.

His published books include: Fires of Home, Ode on Violence, In the Shadowless Light, Elegy for My Aunt, Palms, Life with Unkie, (Un)Extinguished Lamp/Lampara Anapagada, and A Brahms Card Ballad, which was published in Hungarian translation by the Europa Press three years before it was published by Dowitcher Press in California. He has recently completed two books, Happy in an Ordinary Thing, and Obits, and is working on a larger New and Selected Poems.

He lives in Santa Barbara with his New Zealand-born wife Muriel. The couple wrote And Say What He Is: The Life of a Special Child together. They have two living children and three grandchildren.

Translations
In 1987 while visiting Hungary in 1987, Ridlandhe learned of János Vitéz, a "folk epic" poem by Sándor Petöfi, which he later translated as John the Valiant. With Peter Czipott he continues to translate work by the Hungarian poets Sándor Márai and Miklós Radnóti, including Márai's two-act verse play in rhyming couplets, A Gentleman from Venice, about Giacomo Casanova.

He also has translated the Middle English masterpiece, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Two parts of this were published in The Hudson Review; the entire poem is being printed by Juan Pascoe at Taller Martín Pescador in Michoacán, Mexico.

Recognition
He has received a gold medal from the Arpad Society of Cleveland, Ohio, and the 2010 Balassi Sword Award for translating Hungarian literature.