http://www.myspace.com/peterwesselpolyfonias http://delsateliteediciones.blogspot.com/search/label/notas%20de%20redaccion http://tagged.com/take50. Peter Wessel (Copenhagen 1950) is a poet, teacher and journalist, specialized in art, linguistics and music. After experiencing the cultural effervescence of the late ‘60s in California, he moved to Paris with his French girlfriend to write and to get acquainted with the artistic movements there. He returned to Denmark in 1974, and in 1978 he earned a degree in Journalism from the Danish School of Journalism in Aarhus. That same year Peter entered a pilot programme for copywriters, planned and sponsored by eight of Copenhagen’s leading advertising agencies, and, in 1980, an advertising campaign for Citroën 2CV cars, conceived by art director Paul Mikkelsen and copywriter Peter Wessel, won the National Award (The Aurora Prize) for print advertising. Wanting to be near his mother who was suffering from a serious disease in Mallorca, PW moved to the Mediterranean island in 1981 and stayed there for the next decade earning his life as a language teacher and cultural aide to the local government, among other chores attending to the international press and planning the prestigious Palma International Jazz Festival. After his mother’s death in 1985, Wessel married a Spaniard, and in 1990 the couple moved to La Granja de San Ildefonso, a village surrounding a former royal hunting castle in the mountains not far from Segovia and 80 kilometers north of Madrid, the city in which Peter Wessel and his wife finally settled in 1993. PW was for many years a critic for the music magazine Cuadernos de Jazz and has been an Assistant Teacher in North American Studies at the University of Alcalá de Henares. He is also Arts Consultant for the Danish Embassy’s Reina Isabel Foundation and translates youth novels from Danish and Swedish into Spanish for the Madrid based publishing house Siruela Editores. Peter Wessel’s first commercially produced book of poetry, In Place of Absence, was published by Chestnut Hills Press in Baltimore in 1990 and was hailed by poets and writers such as John Ashbery, James Baldwin and Joel Oppenheimer. In 2003 the poet began his Polyfonías poetry project, in which he entwines strands of several languages (English, Danish, French and Spanish). A book-CD, which, among other things, gives evidence of Wessel’s experiments with oral poetry and music in a dialogue with the Danish-Argentinian composer and guitarist Mark Solborg, was published by delsatélite editores in january 2008. Six months later, one of the Polyfonías from the CD was awarded the Second Prize in the international arts competition "2008culturas.com", organized by the Spanish Ministry of Culture to celebrate the European Year for Intercultural Dialogue. Peter Wessel’s poetry in English has appeared in: Webster Review (Missouri), Negative Capability (Alabama), Pulpsmith (New York), South Coast Poetry Journal (California), Footwork (New Jersey), Writers’ Forum (Colorado), Gryphon (Florida), America (New York), Magic Changes (Illinois), Midwest Poetry Review (Illinois), Midwest Arts & Literature (Missouri), Bitterroot (New York), The Mendocino Review (California, Riverrun (Colorado) Blue Unicorn (California). Furthermore his cycle “Poems from La Granja” has been accepted for publication in Alia under the editorship of Stephen Sartarelli. A selection of poems from “Polyfonías” was published by Revistatlántica de Poesía (Council of Cádiz) in 2006. PW has performed recital-concerts of “Polyfonías” at distinguished art and music venues such as Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), Centro Cultural Isabel de Farnesio (Aranjuez), Fundación Antonio Pérez (Cuenca), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Copenhagen Jazz Festival and Ezcaray Jazz Festival as well as in art galleries and literary cafés in Madrid. In 2004 he was the recipient of a grant for a one-month stay at the Fundación Valparaíso in Mojácar (Almería, Spain). The book-CD Polyfonías was published with financial support from the Danish Composer’s Association (KODA) and the Danish Embassy in Madrid

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