Convalescence Dance

About Alexandra Sashe

Alexandra Sashe is a bilingual poet. Born in Moscow in 1976 she studied painting and linguistics. In her mid-twenties she moved to Paris and began to write: at first prose; then - as an essentialized way of living a language poetry. The choice of the language however was neither her mother tongue (which quickly reverted to rudiments) nor yet French (which penetrating ever deeper into her intimate being would soon become her inner speech). Rather it was the Language itself that had made its choice as spontaneous as it seemed necessary: English. In 2013 her first collection of poems Antibodies was published by Shearsman Books. Around the same time she moved to Austria and settled in Vienna. The study of the German and the distance from France intensified her relationship with the French language insulating it within the intimacy of her inner world: soon after she began to write poetry in French. Formed through a successive influence of four languages and cultures she believes that they come to neutralise each other. Today she names and summons her cultural identity as well as her life with only one word: Christian.