Masterclass

Whether or not Robert Frost ever said it, just about everyone assumes that poetry is in fact what is lost in translation. MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole puts his head into the lion’s mouth of assumptions like this one, as he conducts a master class on literary translation and looks at what is actually going on behind the translation of certain poems. 

Peter Cole’s most recent book of poems is Things on Which I’ve Stumbled. His many volumes of translations include The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492 (winner of the 2010 Porjes-Domb TLS Translation Prize) and The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, to be published by Yale University Press in April 2012.

He is the recipient of many awardssuch as the TLS Hebrew translation prize and the American Publishers’ Association Book of the Year. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2007. 

In association with the BCLT