DENISE NEWMAN

I come to writing cold, asking words to bring me to heat, and vice versa. In my poems, videos, and collaborations I look for ways to catch the liveliness of words in dynamic play with the physical world, as unmediated by my will as possible. I feel my ultimate task as a creator is to help keep language from ossifying—crucial work for the collective imagination.

Denise Newman is a multimedia poet and translator based in San Francisco. Her writing, video work, and collaborative projects are guided by questions that blur the boundaries between the personal and social, and explore gaps between perception, language, and reality. Newman has also translated books by three generations of experimental Danish women writers—Inger Christensen, Naja Marie Aidt, and Signe Gjessing.

Newman’s publications include Reality Is Occurring in the Cracks in Reality (Three Count Pour, 2025), The Redesignation of Paradise (Kelsey Street Press, 2024), Future People (Apogee Press, 2016), The New Make Believe (The Post-Apollo Press, 2010), Wild Goods (Apogee Press, 2008), and Human Forest (Apogee Press, 2000). Her translations include Inger Christensen’s Natalja’s Stories (New Directions, 2025), Signe Gjessing’s Tractatus Philosophico Poeticus (Lolli Editions, 2022), and Naja Marie Aidt’s When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl’s Book (Coffee House Press, 2019).

Newman was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2026) and has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts (2025) and the Lucid Art Foundation (2023). She was also awarded two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships for translation (2014, 2023). Newman has received the English PEN Translation Prize for When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl’s Book by Naja Marie Aidt (2018), the PEN Translation Prize for Baboon, also by Aidt, and a 2014 Creative Work Fund Grant.

Newman serves as a Senior Adjunct Professor at California College of the Arts.