Writing the Real: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry

Since the 1960s, poetry in French has been understood in terms of two competing approaches: searching for ‘presence’ on the one hand, ‘littéralité’ - refiguring the everyday - on the other. Contemporary forms of both are found in this anthology, from the ‘new lyricism’ of Bonhomme and Maulpoix to the refracted politics of ‘post-poetry’ in Tarkos and Gleize. The dichotomy, however, quickly breaks down and many poets refuse to be categorised in this way: recent publications include the interd...