Poet, translator, and editor A. Poulin, Jr. (1938–1996) was the founding publisher and president of BOA Editions, Ltd. His distinguished poetry translations include Rainier Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus and The Complete French Poems as well as Anne Hébert's Selected Poems and Day Has No Equal But Night. Poulin's own collections include In Advent, The Widow's Taboo: Poems After the Catawba, A Nest of Sonnets, A Momentary Order, and Cave Dwellers. He also co-edited several editions of the celebrated anthology Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin). 

For his poetry and translations, Poulin received both a creative writing fellowship and a translator's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He also received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two translation awards from Columbia University's Translation Center. In 1971, Poulin joined the faculty at the The College at Brockport, State University of New York, where he was Professor of English. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters by the University of New England.

In 1976, Poulin founded BOA Editions as an independent, not-for-profit press devoted to publishing work by contemporary international and American authors. A mentor to numerous poets and scholars, Poulin died in 1996.