Bio: Finn Bille
Welcome to my website 2020.
I am re-launching this website to make my work available to anyone who is interested–and to those who might become interested.
At a public reading someone will say, I like that poem about the Christmas Tree. Where can I find it in print? The answer will be: You can find it on finnbille.com.
Let me tell you a bit about myself. [References to relevant writing in brackets] and more specific biographical references from poems can be found as notes to individual poems in The KIng’s Coin, which is a kind of memoir in poems.
CHILDHOOD IN DENMARK
I was born in Nørresundby in Denmark on March 7, 1942. Yes, during the German occupation, although I was too young to understand any of that. Legend says that I was born as British airplanes flew overhead on their way to bomb Germany (“Last Night I was a Child Again”). We moved from Jylland to Sjælland where I saw my first wild swan (“Every Time I See a Swan Fly”) and then to København after the war (“Every Time I See a Kite Fly” and “Marzipan,” the story).
Then to the suburb of Lyngby (“When I was Ten” both poem and story) where I started school and roamed the fields and woods of Dyrhaven, the king’s deerpark. Before leaving for America, I visited Elsinore Castle with my father and my brother Per (Story: “Remember Me!”).
FIRST IMMIGRATION TO CALIFORNIA
I immigrated with my father and my older brother Per to Arcadia, California in the spring of 1953. We crossed the Atlantic onboard the Swedish-American Gripsholm, which we boarded in Goteborg (Story: “Crossing the Atlantic”). From New York we rode the Greyhound bus to Washington, D.C. where we visited relatives (“In Washigton D.C.” and the story, “I Am Here”). We side-tripped to the Grand Canyon.
A few days after arriving in Arcadia at the home of our aunt Lava and Uncle Emil Andersen, we were sent to Arcadia’s First Avenue School with no English language skills.
I spent the summer learning to be the enterprising American boy, mowing lawns, delivery papers, and clearing dusty vacant lots.
Before my mother arived with my two younger siblings, Lene and Sten, we rented a litte house in a new Duarte subdivision, next to the dry San Gabriel River (story: “Kings of Duarte” and poem: “Our Mountain Stream”) In 2013 I performed the combined story of my first immigration, “From Bacon Fat to Peanut Butter: An Immigrant’s Story” in Richmond at the conference of the National Storytelling Network.
RETURN TO DENMARK
In 1955 my mother returned with all four children to Denmark. Per and I lived that winter and spring with our godmother, Ragnhild Kobbernagel at Tuse Skole, where she was the principal. Per and I commuted by bike to Stenhus, the private school in Holbæk.
That summer we moved to the apartment in Copenhagen at 78 Østerbrogade, very near Trianglen (“Migrant Voices”). Per and I attended Sortedam Gymnasium where Dea Trier Mørch, the artist and novelist, was a clasmate and close friend. After graduating in 1958 with Realeksamen, I worked in the basement shop of Pibe Dan, and as a bell boy at Vestersøhus hotel while Per finished his apprenticeship as a house painter.
SECOND IMMIGRATION
Per and I flew by way of Greenland to Los Angeles and our father’s house in Monrovia. Per worked as a house painter. I entered Pepperdine College, which was affiliated with the Church of Christ, our aunt’s denomination which had become ours as well in Arcadia and when churches in Texas sent missionaries to Copenhagen. On weekends I worked for my father’s janitorial business, washing windows and cleaning for businesses in Monrovia and surrounding towns.
I majored in English and added a major in psychology and a minor in history.
I was elected president of my junior class, participated in the Model United Nations of the west coast and founded and edited The Expressionist, Pepperdine’s literary magazine, publishing poems and short essays. As a freshman I had met Jeanne Bankey from Georgia. We had been friends, fellow English majors, and active student government members for four years when we decided to get married and I followed her to her home state after graduating in August, 1963.