Anthony Kerrigan, a poet and translator of works by Spanish and Latin American writers, died mach 8th 1991 at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 72 years old.

He died of prostate cancer, his wife, Judith Barnes Kerrigan, said.

Mr. Kerrigan translated works by Jorge Luis Borges, including "Ficciones," "A Personal Anthology," "Poems" and "Irish Strategies," and by Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, including "Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno," a seven-volume collection that Mr. Kerrigan helped edit. He won a National Book Award for his 1973 translation of Unamuno's "Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations."

His other translations included Pablo Neruda's "Selected Poems," Camilo Jose Cela's "Family of Pascual Duarte" and "The Revolt of the Masses," by Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Mr. Kerrigan's own poetry was published in three collections: "Lear in the Tropic of Paris" (1952), "Espousal in August" (1968) and "At the Front Door of the Atlantic" (1969).

He was born in Winchester, Mass., but lived in Cuba until the age of 12, when his father died and he was sent back to the United States to live with relatives.

In 1988, the National Endowment for the Arts gave him an unsolicited grant of $40,000 for lifetime contributions to American letters.

Mr. Kerrigan was a senior guest scholar at the University of Notre Dame and at Indiana University.

Surviving besides his wife are his daughter, Antonia, of Barcelona, Spain; five sons, Michael, of Los Angeles, Camilo Jose, of New York City, Elie, of Majorca, Patrick, of Los Angeles, and Malachy, of South Bend, Ind.; a sister, Joan Recht of Glen Ellyn, Ill., and five grandchildren.