Cole Swensen is an American poet, translator, editor, copywriter, and professor. Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of more than ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz before going on to become the now-Previous Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. She taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa until 2012 when she joined the faculty of Brown University's Literary Arts Program. Her work is considered Postmodern and post-Language school, though she maintains close ties with many of the original authors from that group as well as poets from all over the US and Europe. Her work is hybrid in nature, sometimes called lyric-Language poetry emerging from a strong background in the poetic and visual art traditions of both the US and France and adding to them her own vision. In the US, Cole Swensen's ninth collection of poetry, Goest was a finalist for the National Book Award. Earlier works have been awarded a National Poetry Series selection, Sun & Moon's New American Writing Award, the Iowa Poetry Prize via University of Iowa Press, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her translation of Jean Frémon's The Island of the Dead won the 2004 PEN USALiterary Award for Translation. She has also received grants from the Association Beaumarchais and the French Bureau du Livre.
Sidelights
In France, Swensen has participated in readings and collaborative translation projects with such organizations as the Royaumont Foundation at the beautiful L'abbaye de Royaumont, Columbia University’s Reed Hall, the maison des écrivains et de la littérature in Paris, Double Change and Ivy Writers Paris. Her life-long commitment to translation is a testament to her belief in the international exchange of words and language, and in the importance of radical and traditional poetries for contemporary society. She is member of the Academy of American Poets, and a contributing editor for the periodicals American Letters & Commentary and for Shiny, and for many years was the translation editor for the online contemporary poetry and poetics review How2. She divides her time between Paris and Providence, RI, where she is on the permanent faculty of Brown University's Literary Arts Program. She is also the founder and editor of La Presse, a small press dedicated to the translation and publication in English of contemporary French poetry.
Ours: poems on the gardens of Andre Le Notre —excerpt at POOL
The Glass Age,
The Book of a Hundred Hands
NEF, a translation by Rémi Bouthonnier of Noon
Goest, —Finalist for the National Book Award, 2004, and One of 12 books honored as the "Best Poetry of 2004" by Library Journal.
Such Rich Hour,
Oh, —Finalist for the National Poetry Series, 1998.
And Hand chapbook
Try, —Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, 1998, and Winner of the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, 2000.
Noon —Winner of the New American Writing Award. Re-published with Green Integer
Numen, —Named an “International Book of the Year,” Times Literary Supplement, and Finalist for the PEN West Award in Poetry, 1996. It also appeared in French translation as Numen,
Parc, a translation by Pierre Alferi of Park
Park
New Math —Winner of the National Poetry Series, 1987
anthologies Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing By Women edited by Mary Margaret Sloan, and
Civil Disobediences
American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry,. Swensen co-edited this anthology that includes 70 poets seen as creating cross-genre works, mixing traditional or modernist poetry techniques with experimental and postmodern writings
Contributions to periodicals
Contributor to periodicals in English: including Chicago Review, American Poetry Review, Boston Book Review, Common Knowledge, Conjunctions, Upstairs at Duroc, Grand Street, New American Writing, and ZYZZYVA. She has also translated individual poems for print and online periodicals such as Verse, The Germ, 1913. Online at the extensive Chicago Modern Poetry website, one can discover other poets Swensen has translated including Caroline Dubois or Sabine Macher, and Oulipo poet Michel Gringaud at the drunkenboat publication website or at Free Verse.
Individual poems by Swensen have appeared in French translation: in the reviews “Action Poétique,” "Java," "Vacarme," "Nioque," "Action Poétique," and “Hors-Bords.”
