Henri Cole

Henri Cole (born 1956) is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir.

His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to an American father and French-Armenian mother, and raised in Virginia, United States.

His father, a North Carolinian, enlisted in the service after graduating from high school and, while stationed in Marseilles, met Cole's mother, who worked at the PX.

Together they lived in Japan, Germany, Illinois, California, Nevada, Missouri and Virginia, where Cole attended public schools and the College of William and Mary.

He has published eleven collections of poetry in English.

From 1982 until 1988 he was executive director of The Academy of American Poets.

Since that time he has held many teaching positions and been artist-in-residence at various institutions, including Brandeis University, Columbia University, Davidson College, Harvard University, Ohio State University, Reed College, Smith College, The College of William and Mary, and Yale University.

He has collaborated with the visual artists Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith.

And from 2010 to 2014, he was poetry editor of The New Republic.

Cole currently teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

Cole is openly gay, though in his early work he turned to "nature as a mask for writing about private feelings."

He came out as he "felt a need to speak as a gay man, since until recently we were not encouraged by society to love one another, marry, and have children. So if I have an ethics, it is simply to be true, but never at the expense of original language."