Erik Bendix grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and at the Ecole d’Humanité, a progressive school high in the Swiss Alps. After earning philosophy degrees at Oxford and Princeton, he worked as an editor and in alternative education before moving with his wife to a mountain homestead in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to raise and homeschool their two children. There the lilt of local storytelling and the lush natural surroundings nourished his poetic voice to grow. His father’s family had nearly been silenced by the Nazis, so finding his own voice was not easy at first, then gradually grew into a way to celebrate death and life as a whole. He has translated Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, the latter into full English sonnet form to capture the extraordinary movement of the original. Erik is a lifelong teacher of folkdance from many cultures, a student of movement arts from Tai Chi to Mevlevi dervish whirling, an experienced teacher of the ease and grace of Alexander Technique and a pioneer of new ways to learn how to ski. His profound interest in how people express through movement has drawn him deeper and deeper into the dance of words that poetry can be, into how poetic expression itself can leap or breathe or bow in reverence. His poetry moves between moods and between worlds and moods. He has been writing it for over forty years.

Erik Bendix: poems published

2003

• “Resurrection of Jews in Germany” in Bert Hellinger, Rachel Weeping for Her Children, Family Constellations in Israel (Carl-Auer-Systeme-Verlag, Heidelberg/ Phoenix AZ)

2011

• “Home” in Monarch Review (online journal) 8/15/11 “Airplanes” in Monarch Review (online journal) 8/29/11“Standing Worship” in Word Riot (online journal), July 15, 2011 Issue translation of R.M. Rilke, “Fourth Sonnet” from his Sonnets to Orpheus, Part I,Asheville Poetry Review, vol. 18, no. 1, 2011, Issue 21

2012

• “Blessings After the Meal” in Forge Journal, Issue 5.4, 1/3/12“Two Turtles” in The Saint Ann’s Review, A Journal of Contemporary Arts & Letters, Summer/Fall 2012, 5/7/12
• translation of Ludwig Bendix, “Morning Sun Bath” in Green Hills Literary Lantern, 5/7/12
• “Muir Woods” in Forge Journal, Issue 6.1, 8/9/12

2013

• “Storm Warning” in Euphony Journal, Vol. 13 No. 2, University of Chicago, Spring 2013“Mirrors” in Poetry East, ed. by Richard Jones, DePaul University, Numbers 80 & 81, Fall 2013
• “Homage to Ivan Bilibin” and “Paper Snow” in Forge Journal, Issue 7.1, 5/23/13 “Night For Day” in The Alembic, Providence College,11/25/13

2014

• “Time Is Money” in Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Issue 100, 1/27/14, reprinted in Crack the Spine Spring 2014 Anthology (print)

2016

• “Three Poems In Grief” in Spoon River Poetry Review, accepted for publication 1/17/16
• “Lunar Eclipse” and “Swatting Away Bugs” in Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, accepted for publication 8/18/16