Lannan Foundation

Taha Muhammad Ali's poetry and fiction emerge directly from his experiences of the Israeli-Arab conflict. He is the author of four books of poetry in Arabic and a book of short stories. His book So What: New & Selected Poems, 1971-2005, whose translators include Peter Cole, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2006. His poetry's apparent simplicity and homespun truths conceal the subtle grafting of classical Arabic and colloquial forms of expression. In Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Europe, audiences have been powerfully moved by Taha Muhammad Ali's poems of political complexity and humanity.

Taha Muhammad Ali Bio and Cross Links

Peter Cole is the author of two books of poems, recently reissued as What Is Doubled: Poems 1981-1998, and a new collection, Things on Which I've Stumbled, is forthcoming from New Directions. His many volumes of translations from Hebrew and Arabic include The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, and J'Accuse, by Aharon Shabtai. Cole has received numerous honors for his work, including the PEN Translation Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. He was recently named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Peter Cole Bio and Cross Links