Coming Soon: An Anthology of Contemporary (Experimental) French Poetry

Writing the Real, edited by Nina Parish and Emma Wagstaff, is a new bilingual anthology of contemporary French poetry forthcoming from the U.K.'s beautiful Enitharmon Press. About time we saw such a collection, non? The book, which features 18 key contemporary French-language poets alongside English translations by leading poets and translators, is reviewed today at A Thing for Poetry. "While the experimental end of writing practice is very much the focus here, those experiments are of many different kinds, ranging from the more process-driven approach of Jean-Michel Espitallier . . . or the interrogation of the banalities of everyday language in Christophe Tarkos' poems . . . to the New York School-ish work of Stephane Bouquet." More from David Clarke:

Female poets are strongly represented (for example, Anne Portugal and Sabine Macher) and the editors have done an excellent job of providing an introduction that sets the scene and gives us a sense of who the key players are, while at the same time leaving us free to come to our own judgements. Where further translations are available, details are provided to allow us to follow up on other publications by the poets whose work most holds our attention. The translations themselves are by various authors, many of them practicing poets themselves (such as Keston Sutherland), but the texts are presented alongside the original French, which is always a bonus in this sort of edition. Even if our own grasp on the language is not so strong, we can begin to approach the original texts once we have absorbed the translations.

Clarke goes on to discuss the need for French poetry in the U.K., and the differences between French and U.K. poets. If you're stateside, however, you can make your own distinctions in February, when Writing the Real is officially released. Until then, may we suggest 2015's Circle of Dogs (Solar Luxuriance), by Marseille-based Amandine André, translated by Jocelyn Spaar and Kit Schluter.