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| Cole Swensen | |
|---|---|
| Name | Cole Swensen |
| Birth date | 1955 |
| Birth place | Fort Bragg, California |
| Occupation | Poet, translator, editor, professor |
| Notable works | Above History; Gravesend; Goest |
| Awards | National Poetry Series; Lannan Foundation Residency; Guggenheim Fellowship |
Cole Swensen is an American poet, translator, editor, and professor known for innovative lyric and hybrid forms that intersect historical inquiry, visual art, and translation. Her work engages with figures and events across modern and contemporary literature and art, often drawing on archival materials, visual texts, and transatlantic networks. Swensen has published widely, taught at major universities and arts institutions, and contributed to the translation and dissemination of French and American poetry.
Swensen was born in Fort Bragg, California, and raised on the West Coast amid cultural scenes linked to San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles. She completed undergraduate studies before pursuing graduate work connected to programs at institutions such as Brown University, University of Iowa, and residencies at centers including MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. Her formative influences included North American and European modernists and contemporary poets associated with Language poetry, Objectivist poets, and the New York School.
Swensen's literary career spans poetry, translation, and editorial projects that intersect with art history, archival research, and cross-cultural exchange. She has published collections with independent and university presses affiliated with networks like Wave Books, University of California Press, Coffee House Press, and Alice James Books. Her translations have introduced English-language readers to poets connected with French literature, including writers associated with Surrealism, Oulipo, and contemporary movements around institutions such as École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and publishers like Gallimard. Swensen has collaborated with visual artists exhibiting at venues such as Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Whitney Museum of American Art and participated in festivals including Venice Biennale, Shelter Island Conference, and Brooklyn Book Festival.
Major collections explore history, memory, and the interplay of image and text. Titles include Above History, which engages with archival fragments linked to narratives of American Civil War memory and museum practices; Gravesend, a book-length meditation on place connected to Brooklyn and transatlantic shipping routes; and Goest, a sequence that dialogues with medieval and early modern textual traditions as refracted through contemporary poetics. Recurring themes connect to poets and artists such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Paul Celan, Hélène Cixous, John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Jorie Graham, Charles Olson, and Wallace Stevens. Swensen's practice dialogues with literary historiography involving figures like William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D., Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna Akhmatova, Bertolt Brecht, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Seamus Heaney, W.S. Merwin, Maya Angelou, Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Ron Silliman, M. NourbeSe Philip, Claudia Rankine, Natasha Trethewey, Tracy K. Smith, Ocean Vuong, and Eileen Myles.
Swensen has received awards and fellowships from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, National Poetry Series, PEN American Center, Academy of American Poets, and state arts councils like the California Arts Council and New York State Council on the Arts. She has been honored with prizes associated with presses and competitions including the National Book Critics Circle, PEN/Voelcker Award, and selection committees connected to Poetry Society of America panels. Residencies and honors have linked her to cultural sites like Villa Médicis, Camargo Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Fundación Valparaíso, and fellowships at Harvard University, Columbia University, and Yale University.
Swensen has held faculty appointments at universities and programs such as Brown University, Iowa Writers' Workshop, University of Denver, Wesleyan University, New York University, and visiting positions at Princeton University and Columbia University. She served as editor and co-editor for journals and series associated with presses including Wave Books, University of California Press, Salt Publishing, and collaborative projects with organizations like Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Society, and Paris Review contributors. Her editorial work has involved translation projects, anthologies, and cross-disciplinary volumes that brought together translators, poets, and critics from institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Princeton University Press, and Oxford University Press.
Swensen has lived in locations tied to literary and artistic communities such as Paris, Brooklyn, and Providence, Rhode Island. Her partnerships and collaborations include connections with translators, visual artists, and scholars associated with Université Paris-Sorbonne, Sorbonne Nouvelle, École Normale Supérieure, Smith College, Dartmouth College, Brown University colleagues, and independent publishers across the United States and Europe. She continues to participate in readings, symposia, and collaborative projects at venues including 92nd Street Y, Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, Library of Congress, and international festivals.
Category:American poets Category:American translators Category:Women poets