Cold Spring in Winter (Visible Poets)

by SusanWicks (Translator), ValerieRouzeau (Author)

New
Paperback
2009
$15.24

When Valerie Rouzeau's first poem sequence was published in France a decade ago under the title Pas Revoir , it met with immediate critical acclaim. These poems are an urgent, stammered lament for her dead father, a scrap-merchant, in which the poet's adult voice and that of the little girl she used to be combine in an extraordinary blend of baby-talk, youthful slang, coinages and puns - a breathless delivery of tremendous power. The influential poet and critic Andre Velter has described Rouzeau's poetry as 'violent in its capacity to exalt and disturb'. This quality comes to the fore in Susan Wicks' remarkable translation, the excellence and ingenuity of which, in Stephen Romer's words at the conclusion of his introduction to this volume, 'make good the transposition of this pure and singular voice into English'.

Synopsis

When Valerie Rouzeau's first poem sequence was published in France a decade ago under the title Pas Revoir , it met with immediate critical acclaim. These poems are an urgent, stammered lament for her dead father, a scrap-merchant, in which the poet's adult voice and that of the little girl she used to be combine in an extraordinary blend of baby-talk, youthful slang, coinages and puns - a breathless delivery of tremendous power. The influential poet and critic Andre Velter has described Rouzeau's poetry as 'violent in its capacity to exalt and disturb'. This quality comes to the fore in Susan Wicks' remarkable translation, the excellence and ingenuity of which, in Stephen Romer's words at the conclusion of his introduction to this volume, 'make good the transposition of this pure and singular voice into English'.

$15.24

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 134
Publisher: Arc Publications
Published: 01 Jul 2009
ISBN 10: 1904614302
ISBN 13: 9781904614302

Author Bio

VALERIE ROUZEAU (author) was born in 1967 in Burgundy, France and now lives in a small town near Paris, Saint-Ouen, well-known for its flea-market. She has published a dozen collections of poems, including 'Pas revoir '(le de bleu, 1999), 'Va ou' (Le Temps qu'il Fait, 2002) and more recently 'Apothicaria' (Wigwam, 2007) and 'Mange-Matin' (l'idee bleue, 2008). She has also published volumes translated from Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Ted Hughes and the photographer Duane Michals. She is the editor of a little review of poetry for children (from 5 to 117 years old) called 'dans la lune' and lives mainly by her pen through public readings, poetry workshops in schools, radio broadcasts and translation. SUSAN WICKS (translator), poet and novelist, was born in Kent, England, in 1947. She read French at the universities of Hull and Sussex, and wrote a D. Phil. thesis on Andre Gide. She has lived and worked in France, Ireland and America and has taught at the University of Dijon, University College Dublin and the University of Kent. She is the author of five collections of poetry including 'Singing Underwater '(1992), which won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize, and 'The Clever Daughter' (1996), which was short-listed for both the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes, and she was included in the Poetry Society's 'New Generation Poets' promotion in 1994. A short memoir, 'Driving My Father', was published in 1995. She is also the author of two novels, 'The Key' (1997), the story of a middle-aged woman haunted by the memory of a former lover, and 'Little Thing' (1998), an experimental novel about a young Englishwoman living and teaching in France. Her most recent book of poems, 'De-iced', came out from Bloodaxe in 2007, and a book of short stories, 'Roll Up for the Arabian Derby', from Bluechrome in 2008. STEPHEM ROMER (introducer) was born in Hertfordshire in 1957, and is a lecturer at the University of Tours in France. He has also been Visiting Professor in French at Colgate University, New York. His own poetry collections include 'Idols' (1986); 'Plato's Ladder '(1992); and 'Tribute' (1998). He has translated many French poets, including Philippe Jaccottet, Jean Tardieu, and Jacques Dupin. He has also translated sections from the 'Notebooks of Paul Valery' (2002). His latest collection of poetry is 'Yellow Studio' (2008), short-listed for the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize. Stephen Romer is also the editor of '20th-Century French Poems' (2002).