Sarah Arvio
Finnish North American Literature Association
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Biographical Information (provided by the poet):
On April 3, 1954, Sarah Arvio was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she
grew up in Pomona, New York. From Columbia University School of the Arts, she
received an MFA in Poetry in 1983, and she has engaged in language studies in
France, Mexico, Italy and Germany. She has worked as a translator (free-lance)
for the United Nations since 1993, and as a poetry researcher and assistant to
Voices & Visions, a 13-part series on American poets, produced by the New York
Center for Visual History, from 1984-88. She has been a member of PEN
American Center since 1988.
In her own words, "My father, Raymond Paavo Arvio (1930-1986) was a
first-generation American, and spoke only Finnish until the age of 5. He was born
in Union City, New Jersey and died in Pomona, New York. His mother, Mimi
Markuksela (in America renamed Mae Marcus) (?-1989) who was from Oulu, came
over on a ship with her family in 1906(?) and landed at New York (through Ellis
Island, I believe). She was an actress in the Finnish Theatre in New York in her
youth. She had a younger brother who died as a young man in New York. She
also had a sister named Hilje or Hilja, who was still alive when I was a small child; in
fact she lived with us for a while in West Chester, Pennsylvania, when were small
children. I believe that my father's father, Paavo Arvio, also came over in 1906; he
was, I believe, from Laitila, near Turku. Paavo was a truck driver and did kinds of
seasonal work; he fought for the Americans in the Second World War, and died of
a war wound in the late 1940's in the Veterans Memorial hospital in New York; I
never knew him. Paavo's mother, who was my father's grandmother, lived in
Laitila, until her death in, I believe, 1966 or 67. My father went over to see her in
the sixties, a year or so before she died. Mae Marcus remarried; her second
husband was Paul Lahti; I thought of him as my grandfather."
Arvio continues, "My father married an American woman of English descent,
Cynthia Mallory, from an old American family one branch of which landed in
Hingham, Massachusetts in the 1630's, so I am half Finnish and half old American;
I have five siblings, one of whom is an African Finn adopted from Finland. I visited
Finland in 1968, at the age of 14, and stayed with my paternal cousins the
Vainiotalo family of Helsinki and Suominen family of Laitila."
Publications:
Visits from the Seventh, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002. poetry
Sono: Cantos, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006. poetry
For Visits from the Seventh, Arvio was awarded the Rome Prize of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, 2003-2004, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
(2005-2006). The opening sequence of that book won The Paris Review's
Bernard F. Conners (long poem) Prize and were reprinted in The Best American
Poetry 1998. Other poems in that volume won Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize.
On April 3, 1954, Sarah Arvio was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she
grew up in Pomona, New York. From Columbia University School of the Arts, she
received an MFA in Poetry in 1983, and she has engaged in language studies in
France, Mexico, Italy and Germany. She has worked as a translator (free-lance)
for the United Nations since 1993, and as a poetry researcher and assistant to
Voices & Visions, a 13-part series on American poets, produced by the New York
Center for Visual History, from 1984-88. She has been a member of PEN
American Center since 1988.
In her own words, "My father, Raymond Paavo Arvio (1930-1986) was a
first-generation American, and spoke only Finnish until the age of 5. He was born
in Union City, New Jersey and died in Pomona, New York. His mother, Mimi
Markuksela (in America renamed Mae Marcus) (?-1989) who was from Oulu, came
over on a ship with her family in 1906(?) and landed at New York (through Ellis
Island, I believe). She was an actress in the Finnish Theatre in New York in her
youth. She had a younger brother who died as a young man in New York. She
also had a sister named Hilje or Hilja, who was still alive when I was a small child; in
fact she lived with us for a while in West Chester, Pennsylvania, when were small
children. I believe that my father's father, Paavo Arvio, also came over in 1906; he
was, I believe, from Laitila, near Turku. Paavo was a truck driver and did kinds of
seasonal work; he fought for the Americans in the Second World War, and died of
a war wound in the late 1940's in the Veterans Memorial hospital in New York; I
never knew him. Paavo's mother, who was my father's grandmother, lived in
Laitila, until her death in, I believe, 1966 or 67. My father went over to see her in
the sixties, a year or so before she died. Mae Marcus remarried; her second
husband was Paul Lahti; I thought of him as my grandfather."
Arvio continues, "My father married an American woman of English descent,
Cynthia Mallory, from an old American family one branch of which landed in
Hingham, Massachusetts in the 1630's, so I am half Finnish and half old American;
I have five siblings, one of whom is an African Finn adopted from Finland. I visited
Finland in 1968, at the age of 14, and stayed with my paternal cousins the
Vainiotalo family of Helsinki and Suominen family of Laitila."
Publications:
Visits from the Seventh, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002. poetry
Sono: Cantos, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006. poetry
For Visits from the Seventh, Arvio was awarded the Rome Prize of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, 2003-2004, and a Guggenheim Fellowship
(2005-2006). The opening sequence of that book won The Paris Review's
Bernard F. Conners (long poem) Prize and were reprinted in The Best American
Poetry 1998. Other poems in that volume won Poetry's Frederick Bock Prize.
