Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish-Christian-Muslim Understanding
Peter
Cole has published three collections of poetry, Rift (Station
Hill), Hymns & Qualms (Sheep Meadow Press), and What Is Doubled:
Poems 1981-1989 (Shearsman Books). He has worked intensively on Hebrew
literature, with special emphasis on medieval Hebrew poetry. His prize-winning
translations of the Hebrew Golden Age poets have helped to recreate for
contemporary American readers the multifaceted world of medieval Spain,
in which Jewish artistic and intellectual communities flourished under
Islamic rule. His new anthology, The Dream of the Poem, traces
the arc of the entire period and reveals this remarkable poetic world
in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. Cole has received
numerous awards for his work, including fellowships from the John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid
(Princeton U. Press, 1996), received the Modern Language Association’s
Scaglione Prize for Translation, and he was granted a TLS translation
award for Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. J’Accuse
received the 2004 PEN-America Award for Poetry in Translation. Cole is
also the founder and co-editor of Ibis Editions, a small press devoted
to the publication of Levant-related literature. Born in Paterson, New
Jersey, in 1957, he began studying Hebrew in Jerusalem in 1981, and has
since divided his time between Israel and the United States.
Daniel
Abdal-Hayy Moore’s first book of poems, Dawn Visions, was published
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, San Francisco, in 1964,
and the second, Burnt Heart/Ode to the War Dead, followed in 1972.
He created and directed The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in Berkeley,
California in the late 60s, and presented two major productions, The
Walls Are Running Blood, and Bliss Apocalypse. He became a Sufi Muslim
in 1970, performed the Hajj in 1972, and lived and traveled throughout
Morocco, Spain, Algeria and Nigeria, landing in California and publishing
The Desert is the Only Way Out, and Chronicles of Akhira
in the early 80s (Zilzal Press). In 1996 he published The Ramadan Sonnets
(Jusoor/City Lights), and in 2002, The Blind Beekeeper (Jusoor/Syracuse
University Press). He has been the major editor for a number of works,
including The Burdah of Shaykh Busiri, translated by Shaykh Hamza
Yusuf, and the poetry of Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, translated
by Munir Akash. He is also widely published on the worldwide web: The
American Muslim, DeenPort, and his own website, www.danielmoorepoetry.com,
among others. Moore was born in 1940 in Oakland, California, and has resided
in Philadelphia since 1990.
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of the Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government.