Poet Norma Cole Visits Undergraduate Poetry Class
On October 18th, Professor Dale Smith’s Practicum: Writing Poetry class (ENG 306) had a guest visitor, poet Norma Cole, speak to the class before heading over to Ben McNally Books for her poetry reading. Cole is a Toronto native and attended the University of Toronto for both her BA in Modern Languages and MA in French. She has lived in San Francisco since 1977 and teaches at the University of San Francisco, and has served on the faculty of the MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
Cole has had many books published over the years including Spinoza in Her Youth (2002), The Vulgar Tongue (2000), and Desire & Its Double (1998). She also works as a translator and artist. Cole was the lead artist for the California Historical Society’s San Francisco division. The exhibit was Collective Memory, an installation, performance, and publication for “Poetry and its Arts: Bay area Interactions 1954-2004.”
Cole has won various awards including a fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, Gertrude Stein Awards, the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award, and awards from the Fund for Poetry.
We thank her for coming to visit!