Like Bits of Wind

Selected Poetry and Poetic Prose, 1974- 2014

Pierre Chappuis

Translated by John Taylor

 

5 x 8.5 inches, 336 pp. March 2016

ISBN : 9780857423382

Rs  750.00 (HB)
$27.50 (HB)
£19.50 (HB)

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One of the central figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets, Pierre Chappuis has thus far only been represented in English translation in fragments: a few poems here and there in magazines, online reviews and anthologies. Like Bits of Wind rights that wrong, offering a generous selection of Chappuis’s poetry and prose from the past 40 years, drawn from several of his books. In these pages, Chappuis delves into long-standing questions of the essence of life, our relationship to landscape, the role of the perceiving self, and much more. His skeletal, haiku-like verse starkly contrasts with his more overtly poetic prose, which revels in sinuous lines and interpolated parentheticals. Together, the different forms are invigorating and exciting, the perfect introduction for English-language readers.

Pierre Chappuis was born in Tavennes, Switzerland in 1930 and has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose.

 

John Taylor has translated major selections of the poetry and poetic prose of Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Philippe Jaccottet, José-Flore Tappy, Jacques Dupin and Louis Calaferte. As a critic, he is the author of Into the Heart of European Poetry (2008), A Little Tour through European Poetry (2014) and the three- volume Paths to Contemporary French Literature (2003–11). He has also writ- ten seven books of stories, short prose and poetry, the latest of which is If Night is Falling (2012).

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