Henri Cole

Josephine Olp Weeks Professor of Literature

Department

Literature

Biography

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to a French mother and an American father.  He has published eleven collections of poetry and received many awards, including the Jackson Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall Award, a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Award of Merit Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His has also published the memoir Orphic Paris.

Education

MFA, Columbia University, 1982; MA, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1980; BA, College of William and Mary, 1978

Awards and Affiliations

Elected Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2017

Award of Merit Medal in Poetry, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2016

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Fellow, 2014

The Jackson Poetry Prize, Poets & Writers, 2012

The Thom Gunn Award for Poetry, Publishing Triangle, 2012

Harvard College Phi Beta Kappa poet, 2011

Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, Finalist, 2010

American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Elected Fellow, 2010

Sara Teasdale Award in Poetry, Wellesley College, 2009

National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (Poetry), 2009

Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Academy of American Poets, 2008

Ambassador Book Award in Poetry, English Speaking Union, 2008

Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, 2008

Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, 2008

United States Artist Fellowship in Literature, 2007

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2005

Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, 2004

American Academy of Arts and Letters, Award in Literature, 2004

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Finalist, 2004

Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, 2004

Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, 2004

Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, Finalist, 2004

Japan-US Friendship Commission, Creative Artist Fellowship, 2001

Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin, 2000

Rome Prize in Literature, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1995

National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (Poetry), 1993

Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, 1989-90

Research and Publications

Gravity and Center - Selected Sonnets, 1994-2022 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023)

Blizzard (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020)

Orphic Paris (New York Review Books, 2018)

Nothing to Declare (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015)

Touch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011)

Pierce the Skin:  Selected Poems 1982-2007 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010)

Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007)

Middle Earth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003)

The Visible Man (Knopf, 1998)

The Look of Things (Knopf, 1995) 

The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (Knopf, 1989)

The Marble Queen (Atheneum, 1986)

Paris-Orphée, translated by Claire Malroux, Le bruit du temps (Paris, 2018)

Le Merle, le Loup suivi de Toucher (French translation of Blackbird and Wolf followed by Touch), translated by Claire Malroux, Le bruit du temps (Paris, 2015)

Terre Médiane (French translation of Middle Earth), translated by Claire Malroux, Le bruit du temps (Paris, 2011)

Myrlo y Lobo (Spanish translation of Blackbird and Wolf), translated by Eduardo López Truco, Quálea Editorial, S. L., Cantabria, Spain, 2010

Autoritratto con Gatti (Italian selected poems), translated by Massimo Bacigalupo, Casa editrice Guanda, Parma, 2010

La Apariencia de la Cosas (Spanish selected poems), translated by Eduardo López Truco, Quálea Editorial, S. L, Cantabria, Spain, 2008

Vingt-Deux Poèmes (French/English bilingual edition) translated by Claire Malroux, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2005

Blur (Artist book with Jenny Holzer), Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 2005