New French Poetry

This anthology captures the excitement of one of the most challenging developments in contemporary French writing, the new metaphysical poetry which has become an influential strand in recent French literature. It is a rigorously ontological poetry concerned with the very being of things, and with the nature of poetic language itself. This is not the only kind of poetry being written in France today, but it is an extremely significant development, not only in French poetry, but also in French writing as a whole. Indeed, some of the writers included in this book, notably Édmond Jabès and Gérard Macé, have been influential in the subversion of conventional genres, by the play between poetry, narrative and essay, which has been an important aspect of recent French literature. This anthology brings together writers of different generations, from Gisèle Prassinos and Joyce Mansour, through Jacques Dupin and Bernard Noël, to Frank-André Jamme and André Velter. It represents those who are major figures in France and already have some reputation in Britain and America, alongside writers who are still relatively unknown to English readers. Much of the poetry shows an af?nity with the work of Henri Michaux. The book also reflects the range of poetry published by the innovative French imprint Éditions Fata Morgana, as well as the lists of leading French publishers such as Gallimard, Éditions du Seuil and Mercure de France.

David Kelley (1941-1999) was Senior Lecturer in French and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was made an Officier des Arts et des Lettres for his services to French culture. As well as co-editing The New French Poetry, he translated two other editions of French poets for Bloodaxe, The River Underground: Selected Poems by Jean Tardieu (1991) and Wood asleep by Gérard Macé. He wrote and edited books on Baudelaire, Rousseau, French literary theory and modern European poetry, and his seminal edition of Baudelaire's Salon de 1846 was published by Oxford University Press in 1975. He translated Théophile Gautier into English and David Gascoyne into French. Jean Khalfa is a senior lecturer in French at Trinity College, Cambridge, specialising in history of philosophy, modern literature (in particular contemporary poetry and writing in French from North Africa and the Caribbean), aesthetics and anthropology. He is the editor of What is Intelligence? (CUP, 1994 and 1996); Afrique du sud: le cap de bonne espérance (with Chris Alden, Les Temps Modernes, 1995); The New French Poetry, a Bilingual Anthology (with David Kelley, Bloodaxe Books, 1996); The Dialogue between Painting and Poetry (Black Apollo Press, 2001); An Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (Continuum, 2003); Frantz Fanon, a special issue of Wasafiri No 44 (Routledge, 2005); Pour Frantz Fanon, a special edition of Les Temps Modernes, No 635-636 (Gallimard, 2006); the first complete edition of Michel Foucault's History of Madness (Routledge, 2006 and 2009).