Events & Programs

For this year’s Printemps des Poètes, the Paris literary journal Upstairs at Duroc presents a program centered around poetry and poetry in translation. In a world of easy travel and the Internet, writers belong to international communities. Increasingly, they see translation as a means of enriching and opening up their work to influences from other sources. Paris has an active population of poets who write at the borders between several languages.

Presenters
Anne Talvaz is a poet, novelist and translator who has lived in China and Brazil. She has published 5 poetry collections, including Panaches de mer, lithophytes et coquilles (Comp’Act, 2006) and Confessions d’une Joconde suivi de Pourquoi le Minotaure est triste (L’Act Mem, 2010). Among the books she has translated from English to French are 4 poetry collections by John Ashbery and an anthology edited by Jerome Rothenberg. For the Library audience, she will read her French-to-English translations of work by a contemporary French poet, Marie Etienne, as well as her own poems.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in English, French and Chinese. Her poetry collection, Water the Moon (Marick Press, 2010) is an Honorable Mention in the 2011 Eric Hoffer Book Award. She is one of the founding editors of Cerise Press, an international journal of literature, arts and culture. She will be reading both from her own work and from her English translations of Lan Lan, one of the most influential poets in China today.

Helen Burke, from the UK, writes poems, plays and comedy sketches, as well as being a visual artist. Her widely published and anthologized work has been described as witty, surreal, humane and accessible. It has won a number of prizes in the UK. Burke is a regular reader of her poems on ELFM Radio. Her most recent book is The Ruby Slippers (Valley Press, London).