Peter Levitt was born in New York City in 1946. He is a dual US-Canadian citizen. Legendary poet, Robert Creeley, wrote that Peter Levitt’s poetry “sounds the honor of our common dance”, and in 1989 Levitt received the first year’s prestigious Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry.
His many poetry books include Within Within, One Hundred Butterflies and Bright Root, Dark Root. In addition, he has published Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom and, with Kazuaki Tanahashi, he cotranslated and retold A Flock of Fools: Ancient Buddhist Tales of Wisdom and Laughter. He served as Translation and Associate Editor of the Zen classic The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye – Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, and with Tanahashi he edited The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master.
Levitt has published fiction and literary translations from Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. His translations from Chinese include The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan (translated with Kazuaki Tanahashi) and Yin Mountain: The Immortal Poetry of Three Daoist Women (translated with Rebecca Nie). His Spanish language translations include selections from Las Piedras Del Cielo (Sky Stones) by Pablo Neruda. Blossom Awakening: The Life and Poetry of Wandering Monk Saigyo, which Levitt and Tanahashi recently translated from 12th century Japanese, will be brought out by Shambhala Publications in summer 2025.
A longtime practitioner of Zen, Levitt edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s seminal teaching on the Heart Sutra, The Heart of Understanding, and Jakusho Kwong’s No Beginning, No End: The Intimate Heart of Zen.
Now retired, he was the founder and guiding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia where he resides with his wife, the poet Shirley Graham.
Contact Peter by email: levgram@gmail.com