MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole will read from his work and talk about the hybrid Hebrew poetry of Muslim Spain and its relevance for readers and writers today. Moving between eleventh-century Iberia and today’s Middle East and America, between translations and his own original English poems, Cole will take us into the heart of a dynamic, fulcral, and all-too-little-known period of literary history. Cole has been called “an inspired writer” (the Nation) and “one of the most vital poets of his generation” (Harold Bloom). He is the author of five books of poems—most recently Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017)—and numerous volumes of translation from Hebrew and Arabic, medieval and modern. His many honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jewish National Book Award, and PEN and TLS Prizes in Translation. He divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven, where he teaches at Yale each spring.

Link to Peter Cole’s Paris Review interview on the Art of Translation: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6386/peter-cole-the-art-of-translation-no-5-peter-cole