Shearsman Books | Authors in Translation (French)

Poetry Translations from French

Anne-Marie Albiach   Two Poems: Flammigère & The Line ... The Loss

Translated from French by Peter Riley. English only,
Published 2004, A5 chapbook, 28pp. ISBN 9780907562412. Out of print. 
Still available in a downloadable e-book version by clicking on this link. 

Anne-Marie Albiach, who died in 2013, was one of France's leading avant-garde poets of the post-war era. Although much of her work has been translated and published in the USA, little has so far been made available in Britain. This chapbook unites two texts from very early and very late in her career: Flammigère was her first book, a long poem published as a limited edition by Siècle à Mains in 1967 in London, where she was then living; 'La ligne . . . la perte' appeared in 1999 in a festschrift volume dedicated to fellow-poet Claude Royet-Journoud and was otherwise uncollected in France until a new collection appeared in 2005. This poem shows interesting parallels to the much earlier work. Flammigère was never collected in any of Ms. Albiach's French volumes and she always declined permission for its republication. She did however permit an Italian translation and, then, this English translation. Flammigère has since been collected in the author's posthumous collected poems, Cinq le choeur (Flammarion, 2014).
Anne-Marie Albiach Two Poems: Flammigère & The Line ... The Loss

Guillaume Apollinaire  Seated Woman

Translated from French by Timothy Mathews

Published 2023. Paperback, 180pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $22.

ISBN 9781848618381 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]



Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) was at the forefront of the aesthetic revolution that is the European avant-garde of the early twentieth century. In the accompanying memoir to his English translation of Seated Woman , Timothy Mathews gives a wide-ranging account of the ways Apollinaire interacted in his life and art with Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism and Orphism, and the subjective as well as social experiences involved in urban modernism. In its scattered but controlled composition and the multiplicity of its tones, Seated Woman , published posthumously in 1920, is a powerful counterpoint to the multi-faceted poetry for which Apollinaire is often better known. In playing the music of violence and generosity in the Great War and beyond, it is a story for its time, for our time, and any time. Apollinaire’s writing as a whole is a living testament to the extraordinary creative energy he both witnessed and produced, but also his understanding of its vulnerability to exploitation and decay. This book in turn seeks to honour that understanding, its persistent calls to the imagination, and the wit, vision and honesty that await readers of Apollinaire’s unique voice.

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Guillaume Apollinaire - Seated Woman

Paul Claudel  Break of Noon / Le partage de midi

Edited by Anthony Rudolf.
Translated from French by Jonathan Griffin, David Furlong, John Naughton & Susannah York. English only.
Published 2021. Paperback, 124pp, 9 x 6ins, £12.95 / $20
ISBN 9781848617551 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]


Break of Noon (Partage de midi) is a collaborative attempt, edited by Anthony Rudolf, at preparing an English-language edition of Paul Claudel’s remarkable and complex play, an unstable text which gave Claudel many problems throughout his life. These are explored in essays by David Furlong of Exchange Theatre in London, which put on a production of the play in 2018, and John Naughton, a leading authority on Claudel. The critical apparatus is completed by the late Susannah York’s essay on her own involvement with the play and recounts her interaction with her fellow translator, Jonathan Griffin. The instability of this strange and compelling work in its various original versions is mirrored by the three critical essays in the present work, which do not always see eye to eye. It is thirty years since Jonathan Griffin died and nearly fifty years since Pierre Rouve’s Ipswich production of Jonathan’s translation, which “starred” the then unknown Ben Kingsley and Annie Firbank.

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Paul Claudel - Break of Noon

Lorand Gaspar  Four Poems

Translated from French by Peter Riley.

Published 1993. A5 centre-stapled, 43pp. Published jointly with Oasis Books, London.
 ISBN 9780907562184. Out of print.

Translations of four long poems by a respected contemporary French poet.
Lorand Gaspar: Four Poems

Emmanuel Hocquard  Elegies, and other poems

Translated from French by John A. Scott. English only.
Published 1989. A5 Paperback, 48pp. Out of print.
ISBN 9780907562153

The only collection of Hocquard's (1940–2019) work available in the UK, this book includes the first five Elegies (originally published by P.O.L., Paris, 1979 & 1987) in translations by the renowned Australian poet-novelist, John A. Scott. The complete Elegies (1-7) were subsequently published by Picador Australia in 1990 in Scott's collected Translations. Elegies 6 and 7 were later published in Shearsman magazine in slightly revised versions. Alas, when this edition went out of print, we were unable to obtain permission to reissue it in an expanded edition. For those who have the French there's a good Gallimard paperback of the seven elegies.

Emmanuel Hocquard Elegies, and other poems

Max Jacob  Advice to a Young Poet

Translated from French by John Adlard, with a Preface by Edmond Jabès. 2nd edition.
Published 2023. Paperback, 86p, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848618626  [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]


Advice to a Young Poet is the English translation, first published on the centenary of the author’s birth in 1967, of Max Jacob’s posthumous Conseils à un jeune poète. This was Jacob’s last major statement on poetry, the culmination of a lifetime’s reflection on, and practice of, the art. This book makes his great personal as well as literary influence on many poets and writers easier to understand. The translator, John Adlard, supplies an introduction which is a valuable contribution to the understanding of Jacob. The book is completed by a deeply personal preface from the pen of Edmond Jabès, and a historically important afterword by the “young poet” himself, Jacques Evrard, the first time he had expressed himself on the subject.

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Max Jacob - Advice to a Young Poet

Stéphane Mallarmé  Sonnets

Translated from French by David Scott. Bilingual edition.

Published 2008. Paperback, 128pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781905700424 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

 


A fully bilingual edition of Mallarmé's Sonnets, with introduction and notes designed for the undergraduate. An ideal way to find one's way into Mallarmé's engagement with this particular form.


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Stéphane Mallarmé Sonnets

Gérard de Nerval  Les Chimères

Shearsman Classics series, No. 24.
Translated from French by Will Stone. Bilingual edition. 
Introductions by Anne Beresford & Michael Hamburger and with notes by Norma Rinsler.
Published 2017. Paperback, 64pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848614109 [Download a sample PDF from this book.]

Nerval is one of the most important writers of the French Romantic movement. His great sonnet cycle, Les Chimères, in its marvellous combination of spell, quest and dream, continues to fascinate writers, readers, and translators. Will Stone’s spirited English versions are accompanied by an essay, as well as by an introduction – written in 1949 – by the late Michael Hamburger, as well as commentary by Norma Rinsler, the doyenne of English Nervaliens.
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Gérard de Nerval Les Chimères
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