BIO

FRANCIS POOLE first visited Morocco in 1973 and 1975. He lived in Tangier in the late 70s and early 80s where he taught English at the American School of Tangier. During this time he met and was befriended by Paul Bowles, in whose apartment he also met Abdelouahed Boulaich, Mohamed Mrabet, Mohamed Temsamani, Mohamed Choukri, Gavin Lambert, Claude Thomas, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, and others. During Poole’s three-year stay in Tangier he wrote poetry and edited BLADES, a small magazine of experimental writing to which Paul Bowles contributed several items, including the first poem he ever wrote as a young child. After other teaching stints in Evora and Lisbon, Portugal, Poole eventually returned to the USA, where he became a film archivist at the University of Delaware, which had a Paul Bowles collection. Poole was then able to negotiate the acquisition of a substantial amount of Bowles’s papers, notebooks, letters, and books, which greatly expanded the University of Delaware’s collection. Poole last spoke with Bowles in September, 1999, two months before his death. The outcome of that conversation was the last interview with Paul Bowles, which appeared in Five Points.

Poole has published several collections of prose and poetry, including Break Up My Water (a collection of poems in collaboration with Blaster Al Ackerman, Poporo Press 2011), Everybody Comes to Dean’s; Dean’s Bar, Tangier, (Poporo Press, 2012), and Snakeskin Raincoat, Poporo Press, 2011. He co-edited with Kevin Lacey, Mirrors on the Maghrib: Critical Reflections on Paul and Jane Bowles and Other American Writers in Morocco (Caravan Books, 1996.) His essay on Hollywood’s depiction of the Moroccan bandit, Moulay Ahmed al-Raisuli in The Wind and the Lion, was published in The Arab-African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies, and an essay on William Burroughs and the Beats was published in International Quarterly. A number of his poems have been published in limited editions by Feral Press (Oyster Bay, N.Y.) with collages by the collage artist and poet, John Digby. Other writings have appeared in the Village Voice, Exquisite Corpse, Black Moon, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Bukowski Review, Chiron Review, Full Metal Poem, Lost and Found Times, New York Quarterly, Pearl, Poema Convidado, Poetry East, Rolling Stone, Shattered Wig Review and elsewhere. In 2008 while in Tangier he discovered the only surviving print of Sara Driver’s film of Paul Bowles’ short story, You Are Not I. After repatriating the film, it was restored and re-premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/movies/13driver.html

Recently he collaborated with Mark Terrill on two limited edition chapbooks of poetry illustrated with collages by John Digby, The Spleen of Madrid and A Pair of Darts (both Feral Press, 2012). He is also collaborating with Mark on a supernatural novel set in Tangier. Sections of the work-in-progress are being posted on B O D Y. http://bodyliterature.com/