Wood Asleep

Gérard Macé's work challenges the barriers between poetry and the essay. This play between and within genres is essential to his writing – which has been called essai merveilleux – and derives from a questioning of language in its broadest sense. He is equally interested in the seductive musicality of words and in the remembered gestures which traced the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the calligraphic writing of the Far East. His fascination with dictionaries, grammars and glossaries leads him off on journeys in which the real and the imaginary are fused, but without being confused. He slips between words like a marvelling child constantly hoping that one day the world might be read like an open book.

This edition brings together three series of prose poems, Le Jardin des langues (1974), Le balcon de Babel (1977) and Bois dormant (1983). Other books by Macé have as their subject literary figures such as Rimbaud, Corbière, Nerval and Champollion, while Rome et le firmament and Leçon de chinois evoke places heavily charged with culture and history. Macé's other books include Vies antérieures (1991), which takes up the relationship between memory and writing, in the form of Lives (as in the Lives of saints or illustrious men), and La mémoire aime chasser dans le noir (1993), which develops his fascination with the image – the poetic image, dream image and photographic image. Timothy Mathews took over as Gérard Macé's translator for this edition following the death of David Kelley who had started work on the book.

Jean-Pierre Richard was one of Europe's foremost literary critics. He has written not only on French poets but also on Stendhal, Flaubert and Proust. He has a wide following throughout Europe and the USA, and is admired particularly for his approachable and sensuous accounts of French writers.

Bloodaxe Contemporary French Poets: 8

Gérard Macé was born in Paris in 1946. He is a poet, essayist and translator. His first book, Le jardin des langues, appeared in 1974 from Gallimard, who have continued to publish his cross-genre writing for over 50 years. His work challenges the barriers between poetry and the essay. This play between and within genres is essential to his writing – which has been called essai merveilleux – and derives from a questioning of language in its broadest sense.

His Bloodaxe edition Wood asleep / Bois dormant brings together three series of prose poems, Le Jardin des langues (1974), Le balcon de Babel (1977) and Bois dormant (1983), its English translation begun by David Kelley at the time of his death then taken over and completed by Timothy Mathews. Other books by Macé have as their subject literary figures such as Rimbaud, Corbière, Nerval and Champollion, while Rome et le firmament and Leçon de chinois evoke places heavily charged with culture and history. Macé's other books include Vies antérieures (1991), which takes up the relationship between memory and writing, in the form of Lives (as in the Lives of saints or illustrious men), and La mémoire aime chasser dans le noir (1993), which develops his fascination with the image – the poetic image, dream image and photographic image. In addition to his many books he has also translated the work of many other authors including Giorgio Agamben, Umberto Saba and Thomas De Quincey.

David Kelley's translation of Leçon de chinois (1981), or Chinese Lesson, was published in The New French Poetry, edited by David Kelley and Jean Khalfa (Bloodaxe Books, 1996). Brian Evenson's translation of Le dernier des Égyptiens (1988), winner of the Prix France Culture, was published as The Last of the Egyptians by Burning Deck in 2011. Gérard Macé's other honours include the Prix Femina-Vacaresco (1980), the Grand Prix de Poésie, given by l'Académie française for his life's work (2008), and the Prix Robert Ganzo (2023). He has published more than 50 books, most recently Un Détour par l'Orient (2001), Le goût de l'homme (2002), Leçon de choses (2004), Illusions sur mesure (2004), Je suis l'autre (2007), Filles de la mémoire (2007), Promesse, tour et prestige (2009), Pensées simples (2011), La carte de l'empire (2014), Des livres mouillés par la mer (2016), Colportage (2018), Et je vous offre le néant (2019) and Silhouette parlante (2025), along with his anthology La pensée des poètes (2021).