National Network for Equitable Library Service

The belief in translation as an act of self-portraiture drives Afterwords, Geoffrey Cook's ambitious reimagining of German poems by Goethe, Heine, Rilke and Brecht. Cook's versions not only transform these foreign texts into English poems in their own right, but enrich and expand his uniquely prismatic voice. Cook brings a contemporary and Canadian tone to his adaptations, which also showcase the exacting craftsmanship for which his first collection, Postscript, was praised. Afterwords is a book that daringly celebrates authorship as a shared project. "Do you / not feel," writes Goethe, "that, in my songs, / I am one and the other, too?" Geoffrey Cook's poetry and translations have been widely published and anthologized. His first book, Postscript (Signal, 2004) was shortlisted for the Alfred G. Bailey and Gerald Lampert Memorial awards. He lives in Sainte-Adèle, Quebec.