Norma Cole. Courtesy Woodland Pattern Book Center.
Norma Cole (born May 12, 1945) is a Canadian-born contemporary American poet, visual artist, and frequent translator from the French.
Life[]
Overview[]
A member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan in the '80s, and a fellow traveler of San Francisco's language poets, Cole is also allied with contemporary French poets.[1]
Youth and education[]
Norma Cole was born in Toronto, Ontario. She attended the University of Toronto, receiving a B.A. in Modern Languages and a graduate M.A. in French.[2]
Career[]
She moved to France in time to absorb the revolutionary atmosphere of the May 1968 general strike, but returned to Toronto in the early 1970s before she migrated to San Francisco in 1977, where she has lived ever since.[1] 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.[3]
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".[4] Recently, she collaborated with The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives at SFSU in honor of their 50th 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.[4]
And:
- Aspects of the installation will change over time, providing an evolving and adaptable creative space, altered by the objects and people moving through it...the project will 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."[4]
Recognition[]
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 Memorial Lecture"--- won the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award. With Boston photographer Ben E. Watkins she won the Purchase Award for the photo/text collaboration, "They Flatter Almost Recognize".
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Mace Hill Remap. Paris: Moving Letters Press, 1988.
- Metamorphopsia. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1988.
- Thinking in Pictures You See the Answers. Buffalo, NY: University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1989.
- My Bird Book. Los Angeles: Littoral Books, 1991.
- Mars. Berkeley, CA: Listening Chamber, 1994.
- And the Tide Shall Cover the Earth. New Orleans, LA: Anchorage Press, 1994.
- Moira. Oakland, CA: O Books, 1995.
- Catching Letters and Joker Lives. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1995.
- Entropics, Calasters, and Doubtful Fragments. Edinburgh: Morning Star, 1995.
- Contrafact. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1996.
- Desire & its Double. Saratoga, CA: Instress, 1998.
- Spinoza in Her Youth: Poems. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1999; Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2002. ISBN 1-890650-09-9
- The Vulgar Tongue. San Francisco: a+bend, 2000.
- Eat the Beans. Hawkhaven Press, 2001.
- A little a & a. Los Angeles, CA: Seeing Eye Books, 2002.
- Burns. Brooklyn, NY: Belladonna Books, 2002.
- Do the Monkey. La Laguna, Canary Islands: Zasterle Press, 2006. ISBN 84-87467-44-X
- Declaration (with others; illustrated by Mark di Suvero). Los Angeles: Beyond Baroque, 2006.
- Natural Light. New York: Libellum, 2009.
- Where Shadows Will: Selected poems, 1988-2008. SanFranciso: City Lights, 2009.
- 14000 Facts. Davis, CA: a+bend Press, 2009.
- More Facts. Montreal: Tente, 2009.
- Win these Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes inside. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2010.
- Coleman Hawkins Ornette Coleman. Providence, RI: Horse Less Press, 2012.
- Actualities (illustrated by Marina Adams). Brooklyn, NY: Litmus Press, 2015.
Non-fiction[]
- To Be At Music: Essays and talks. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2010.
Text & Image[]
- SCOUT (text/image work in CD-ROM format). San Francisco: Krupskaya Books, 2005.
- At All: Tom Raworth and his collages. Oakland, CA: Hooke Press, 2006.
Translated[]
- Danielle Collobert, It Then. Oakland, CA: O Books, 1989.
- The Surrealists Look at Art: Eluard, Aragon, Soupault, Breton, Tzara {edited & translated with Michael Palmer).Venice, CA: Lapis Press, 1990.
- Emmanuel Hocquard, This Story is Mine: Little autobiographical dictionary of elegy. Saratoga, CA: Instress, 1999.
- Anne-Marie Alblach, A Discursive Space: Interviews with Jean Daive. [Sausalito, Calif.] : [Duration Press], 1999.
- Crosscut Universe: Writing on writing from France (translated & edited). Providence, RI: Burning Deck Press, 2000.
- Anne Portugal, Nude = Le plus simple appareil. Berkeley, CA: Kelsey St. Press, 2001.
- Distant Noise by Jean Frémon, (translated with Lydia Davis, Serge Gavronsky, & Cole Swensen), Penngrove, CA : Avec Books, 2003.
- Danielle Collobert, Notebooks, 1956-1978. Brooklyn, N.Y. : Litmus Press, 2003. ISBN 0-9723331-1-8
- Fouad Gabriel Naffah, Mind-God and the Properties of Nitrogen. Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 2004.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[5]
See also[]
Norma Cole Reading at Small Press Traffic
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Welcome to Moe's Books, Berkeley! Used, New, and Rare Books
- ↑ Norma Cole b. 1945, Poetry Foundation, Web, Feb. 25, 2012.
- ↑ Libellum Books: Norma Cole
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 CWF - Norma Cole
- ↑ Search results = au: Norma Cole, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Sep. 10, 2015.
External links[]
- Poems
- Norma Cole at the Woodland Pattern Book Center (1 poem)
- "Speech Production: Themes and Variations" poem by Cole at Shampoo.
- Norma Cole b. 1945 at the Poetry Foundation.
- Books
- Norma Cole @durationpress.com includes e-book text of Cole's Mace Hill Remap archived here
- Audio / video
- Norma Cole at PennSound.
- Norma Cole at YouTube
- "Yellow and...: A Response to the Poetry of Marjorie Welish.": talk on the U.S. poet and painter Marjorie Welish, recorded 5 April 2002; Slought Foundation Online Content; access/download recorded audio
- Books
- Norma Cole at Amazon.com
- About
- Contemplating Table(t)s Marjorie Welish reviews Spinoza in Her Youth by Norma Cole on-line at Jacket
- Norma Cole, Writing as luminousness, Part 1 essay by poet and publisher Laura Hinton
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