Norma Cole (born May 12, 1945) is a Canadian poet, visual artist, translator, and curator. An Anglophone Canadian by birth, Cole learned

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

at an early age, and went on to translate the works of French poets

Emmanuel Hocquard Emmanuel Hocquard (11 April 1940 – 27 January 2019) was a French poet. Life He grew up in Tangier, Morocco. He served as the editor of the small press ''Orange Export Ltd.'' and, with Claude Royet-Journoud, edited two anthologies of new Amer ...

Danielle Collobert Danielle Collobert () was a French author, poet and journalist. Biography Danielle Collobert was born in Rostrenen, Côtes-d'Armor, on 23 July 1940. Her mother, a teacher, was obliged to live in a neighbouring village, and Collobert thus grew u ...

, ,

Jean Daive Jean Daive (born 13 May 1941) is a French poet and translator. He is the author of novels, collections of poetry and has translated work by Paul Celan and Robert Creeley among others. He has edited encyclopedias, worked as a radio journalist an ...

, and others with whom she is intellectually allied. In the late 1970s and 1980s Cole was a member of the

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

-based circle of poets congregating around Robert Duncan. Her papers are collected at the Archive for New Poetry at the Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California San Diego.

Early life and career

She was born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, Canada to an Anglophone family, Norma Cole began learning French in middle school. Cole studied at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, where she received a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literature (French and Italian) in 1967 and an M.A. in French Language and Literature in 1969. After university, Cole moved to France in time to absorb the revolutionary atmosphere of the aftermath of the

May '68 May 68 () was a period of widespread protests, strikes, and civil unrest in France that began in May 1968 and became one of the most significant social uprisings in modern European history. Initially sparked by student demonstrations agains ...

general strike. She spent several years living in a small village in the foothills of the

Alpes-Maritimes Alpes-Maritimes (; ; ; ) is a Departments of France, department of France located in the country's southeast corner, on the France–Italy border, Italian border and Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast. Part of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'A ...

near Nice. During this period in France, Cole began drawing, sculpting, and establishing relationships with many contemporary French poets. In the early 1970s Cole returned to Toronto, before migrating to San Francisco in 1977, where she has lived ever since. Upon her arrival to the Bay Area, Cole got a job in the public school system, but it was through her association with

New College of California New College of California was a college founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1971 by former Gonzaga University President John Leary. It ceased operations in early 2008. New College's main campus was housed in several buildings in the Mission ...

that she met her core community of poets, including Robert Duncan, Michael Palmer, David Levi Strauss, Susan Thackrey, Aaron Shurin, and Laura Moriarty. However she continued to spend time in France, and her association with French poets has been crucial to her work. Important French connections have included

Claude Royet-Journoud Claude Royet-Journoud (born 8 September 1941 in Lyon, France) is a contemporary French poet and artist living in Paris . Overview Royet-Journoud's publications in French include his tetralogy, published between 1972 and 1997: ''Le Renversement'', ...

, Emmanuel Hocquard, and Joseph Simas, who published her first book, ''Mace Hill Remap''. Norma Cole is the recipient of the Gerbode Poetry Prize and a grant from the Fund for Poetry. In 2006 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. "The Poetics of Vertigo" — delivered as the 1998 "

George Oppen George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions o ...

Memorial Lecture" for The Poetry Center, SFSU — won the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award. With Boston photographer Ben E. Watkins she won the Purchase Award for their

photo/text Photo-text, also written as photo/text, is a hybrid form of artistic expression that combines photography and textual elements to convey a message or create a narrative. This combination allows for a multi-dimensional experience for the viewer. N ...

collaboration, "They Flatter Almost Recognize."

Recent projects

Norma Cole's work has received great acclaim for her: "openness to traditions and practices, artists and writings, radically divergent from her own". Recently, she collaborated with ''The Poetry Center'' & ''American Poetry Archives'' at

SFSU San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

in honor of their fiftieth anniversary. There she helped to create a site-specific gallery installation titled ''Collective Memory'' which opened on December 11, 2004 and ran through April 16, 2005. The project was described as: :*"...a departure from her earlier work, extending what has been primarily a written, literary practice to the expanded dimensions of a public space.... Aimed at exploring and embodying the creative process involved in making poetry, Cole...worked both on site and off, inviting, responding to, and incorporating into her text the comments, perceptions, and contributions of visitors...opening the possibilities for more active exchange with others.... Aspects of the installation ere changedover time, providing an evolving and adaptable creative space, altered by the objects and people moving through it.... e project...openly demonstrate that poetry making is not an insular and isolated activity, acceptable as long as it's on the perimeter of society, but an integrated art form based in communal exchange, from which we need to learn."

Selected works

Poetry, prose, books, and chapbooks

*''Mace Hill Remap'' (Paris: Moving Letters, 1988). e-text version available: see ''External links'' below ">e-text.html" ;"title="e-text">e-text version available: see ''External links'' below *''Metamorphopsia'' (Poets & Poets, 1988). *''My Bird Book'' (Littoral, 1991). *''Mars'' (Listening Chamber, Berkeley, California 1994). *''Moira'' (O Books, 1995). *''Contrafact'' (Poets & Poets, 1996). *''Quotable Gestures'', (CREAPHIS/un bureau sur l'Atlantique, France, 1998) *''Desire & its Double'' (Instress, 1998). *''The Vulgar Tongue'' (a+bend, 2000). *''Spinoza in Her Youth'' (Omnidawn Publishing, Richmond, CA, 2002) . *''A little a & a'' (Seeing Eye Books, Los Angeles, 2002). *''Burns'' (Belladonna Books, 2002). *''Do the Monkey'' (Zasterle, 2006) . *''Natural Light'' (Libellum, 2009) *''Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988-2008'' (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2009) . *''14000 Facts'' (A+Bend Press, 2009) *''To Be At Music: Essays & Talks'' (Omnidawn Publishing, Richmond, CA, 2010) * ''Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside'' . (Omnidawn Publishing, Richmond, CA, 2010)

Text and image

*''Scout'', text/image work in CD ROM format, (Krupskaya, 2004). *''At All: Tom Raworth & His Collages'' (Hooke Press, 2006). *''Collective Memory'' (Granary Books, 2006), poetry/photos, with book design by Emily McVarish; based on Cole's extended installation/performance for the exhibition "Poetry and its Arts: Bay Area Interactions 1954-2004" (California Historical Society, San Francisco, CA, 2004–05).

Translations

*''It Then'' by

(O Books, 1989). *''The Surrealists Look at Art'', essays by

Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...

Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally **Breton people **Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Gale ...

, Eluard, Soupault, Tzara, edited and translated with Michael Palmer, (Lapis Press, Venice, California, 1990). *''This Story is Mine: Little Autobiographical Dictionary of Elegy'' by

, (Instress, 1999). *''A Discursive Space: Interviews with

'' by

Anne-Marie Albiach Anne-Marie Albiach (9 August 1937 – 4 November 2012) was a contemporary French poet and translator. Overview Anne-Marie Albiach's was a renowned French poet and writer born in Saint -Nazaire, France on 9 August 1937. Anne- Marie Albiach ...

, (Duration Press, Sausalito, California, 1999. *(editor and translator) ''Crosscut Universe, an anthology of poetry / poetics by contemporary French writers'', ( Burning Deck, 2000). *''Nude'' by

Anne Portugal Anne Portugal (born 29 March 1949) is a French poet who lives and works in Paris. She was born in Angers (Maine-et-Loire) and attended Paris 8 University in the suburbs of Paris. Her work is influenced by, and often references, Jacques Roubaud ...

e Plus simple appareil (Kelsey Street Press, Berkeley, California, 2001) *''Distant Noise'' by Jean Frémon, (with

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes very short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics ...

, Serge Gavronsky,

Cole Swensen Cole Swensen (born 1955, in Kentfield, California) 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 ...

), (Avec Books, Penngrove, California, 2003). *''Notebooks 1956-1978'' by Danielle Collobert, (Litmus Press, 2003) *''The Spirit God and the Properties of Nitrogen'' by Fouad Gabriel Naffah (Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, California, 2004).

References

External links

Norma Cole Papers
MSS 0766
Special Collections & Archives
UC San Diego Library.

includes e-book text of Cole's ''Mace Hill Remap'' archived here

Cole's site-specific installation for "The Poetry Center"

poem by Cole at ''Shampoo'' website
"Yellow and...: A Response to the Poetry of Marjorie Welish."
talk on the U.S. poet and painter

Marjorie Welish Marjorie Welish ( ; born June 2, 1944) is an American poet, artist, and art critic. Welish is a graduate of Columbia University and received her M.F.A. degree from Vermont College and Norwich University. She also studied at the Art Students Lea ...

, recorded 5 April 2002; Slought Foundation Online Content; access/download recorded audio
''Contemplating Table(t)s''
Marjorie Welish reviews ''Spinoza in Her Youth'' by Norma Cole on-line at ''

Jacket Magazine ''Jacket'' was an online literary periodical founded by the Australian poet John Tranter, published from 1997-2010. The first issue was in October 1997. Until 2010, each new number of the magazine was posted at the website piece by piece unti ...

''
Norma Cole, Writing as Luminousness (Part 1)
essay by poet and publisher Laura Hinton {{DEFAULTSORT:Cole, Norma 1945 births Living people Canadian women poets University of Toronto alumni Canadian expatriate academics in the United States Canadian expatriate writers in the United States 20th-century Canadian poets 20th-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Canadian poets 21st-century Canadian women writers 20th-century Canadian translators 21st-century Canadian translators