John Taylor

John Taylor was born in Des Moines in 1952. He has lived in France since 1977. As a translator from three languages (French, Italian, Greek) and as a critic who has written books of essays about contemporary poets from all the European countries, he has long been one of the bridges between European literature and English-speaking countries.

Cycladic Press has published his memoir Harsh out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos and his translation of Petropoulos’s Mirror for You: Collected Poems (1967-1999). Taylor has also translated Elias Papadimitrakopoulos’s stories and Manolis Xexakis’s poetic prose. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges (co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis), and Transizioni, issued bilingually in Italy and illustrated by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos.

Links

John Taylor’s essay “Eros and other Spiritual Adventures (Veroniki Dalakoura)” in his book Into the Heart of European Poetry (2008): 

John Taylor’s website