Norma Cole

Norma Cole (born May 12, 1945) is a contemporary American poet, visual artist, translator, and curator. An Anglophone Canadian by birth, Cole learned French as a child, and went on as an adult to translate the works of French poets Emmanuel Hocquard, Danielle Collobert, Fouad Gabriel Naffah, and Jean Daive, with whom she is intellectually allied. In the 1970s and 1980s Cole was a member of the San Francisco-based circle of poets congregating around Robert Duncan. Cole is often identified as a Language poet.

Born in Toronto, Canada to an Anglophone family, Norma Cole began learning French in middle school. Cole studied at the University of Toronto, 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 general strike. She spent several years living in a small village in the foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes 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 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, Emmanuel Hocquard, and Joseph Simas, who published her first book, Mace Hill Remap.

...
Wikipedia