Born in New York City, Carmi grew up in a home where Hebrew was the mother tongue. Having lived as a child in Palestine, he immigrated in 1947. He has taught at Brandeis, Oxford, and Stanford, and was poet-in-residence at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Carmi has published 10 volumes of poetry in Hebrew. Thus, far, three of these works have appeared in English translation. In Israel he was awarded the Shlonsky Prize for Poetry, the Brenner Prize for Literature, and the Prime Minister's Award for Creative Writing. He was also awarded the 1982 Irving and Bertha Neuman Literary Award of New York University's Institute of Hebrew Culture and Education and the 1982 Kenneth B. Smilen/Present Tense Literary Award for his translation and editing work for The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse.
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