Simon Pettifar - Librettist
Librettist Simon has lived in London, Berlin and Brussels and currently counts his blessings in the Independent Kingdom of Hay-on-Wye on the England-Wales border.
After a spell working for a small academic publisher and a brief stint as an independent rock promoter in Brighton, he founded Black Spring Press, commissioning Nick Cave's first novel and reviving the reputation of black-comedy thriller writer Kyril Bonfiglioli among other ventures.
His poetry collections Seawrack, Further Poems, Bhakti and Way-on-High are, in Allen Ginsberg's happy phrase, "all published in heaven", though occasional selections have appeared in various journals and anthologies over the years.
In collaboration with a Czech native-speaker, he is currently finishing translations for a Selected Poems of Jan Skácel in English and is also writing a screenplay based on the life and second novel of the American writer Nathanael West.
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