Peter Levitt (born September 2, 1946 in New York City) is a Canadian poet and translator. He is also the founder and teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle, in the Soto Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi.
Background
He has taught poetry, writing and creativity workshops and seminars around the world, including at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Naropa InstituteJack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and as a faculty member in poetry and translation for the MFA Writers Program at Antioch University, a program he designed with Eloise Klein Healy. He emigrated to Canada in 2000 and became a citizen shortly thereafter. Once there, he taught translation in the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Optional Residency MFA Program.[1] He was in the anthology and film, Poets Against the War. He was at the 2009 Montreal Zen Poetry Festival.[2]
He is the father of a daughter, Sheba, and a son, Tai, and lives with his wife, the poet Shirley Graham on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.
The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan. (Shambhala Publications, 2018) Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt ISBN1611804264
Yin Mountain: The Immortal Poetry of Three Daoist Women, Translated with Rebecca Nie. Shambhala Publications. 2022.
