John Taylor was born in Des Moines in 1952. He has lived in France since 1977. Among his many translations of French, Italian, and Modern Greek literature are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Voélin, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Catherine Colomb, Lorenzo Calogero, Alfredo de Palchi, Elias Petropoulos, and Elias Papadimitrakopoulos. For Black Square Editions, he has translated Jaccottet's PONGE, PASTURES, PRAIRIES (2021). He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently THE DARK BRIGHTNESS (Xenos Books, 2017), Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press, 2017), REMEMBRANCE OF WATER & TWENTY-FIVE TREES (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2018), and a "double book" coauthored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges (The Fortnightly Review Press, 2018). His first two books, The Presence of Things Past (Story Line Press, 1992) and Mysteries of the Body and the Mind (Story Line Press, 1998), were republished in new editions by Red Hen Press in 2020.