February 7th, 2005: Richard Katrovas & Oklahomo Trio

Born November 4, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia, Richard Katrovas first came to Prague in the months preceding the Velvet Revolution and was witness to that historic event. A graduate of the esteemed Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Katrovas has taught at the University of New Orleans since 1983 and is the founding Academic Director of Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program
The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Katrovas is the author of five books of poetry, Green Dragons (winner of the Wesleyan University Press New Poets Series), Snug Harbor (Wesleyan), The Public Mirror (Wesleyan), The Book of Complaints (Carnegie Mellon University Press), and Dithyrambs (Carnegie Mellon); a book of short stories, Prague USA (Portals Press); a memoir, The Republic of Burma Shave (Carnegie Mellon University Press), and a novel, The Mystic Pig (Smallmouth Press); his The Disenfranchised: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Katrovas, as guest editor of a special double issue of New Orleans Review, edited, and participated in much of the translation of, the first representative anthology of contemporary Czech poetry, Ten Years After the Velvet Revolution. His poems, stories, reviews and essays have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Antioch Review, Contemporary Fiction, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, New England Review, Poetry, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review; as well as Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry In Traditional Forms (Harper&Row), New American Poets of the 90’s (Godine), and the forthcoming Poets of the New Century (Godine), among many others.
www.RichardKatrovas.com

Oklahomo Trio
Bored to death by the Swedish winter, Ida decided to get Henrik a guitar for his birthday. Henrik started playing it, and for the first time in her life, Ida sang in front of another person. Once she got started, she never wanted to stop singing. Soon they formed a band, together with an extremely intelligent and beautiful class mate of Ida´s, named Andrea. The band´s name was, because of all the member´s incredable queerness, Oklahomo Trio. Soon, Andrea decided to be a neuropsychologistdoctor-thingy, and the two slackers decided to move to the dark east. One year after the guitar was bought, the band name is still the same, even though the members are no longer as many. However, Oklahomo Trio is still Sweden´s best acoustic heartbreakers.
To listen to some old songs, please visit www.oklahomo.dk/oklahomo
Photography by Christian Rockstrom