Treading Lightly

The first English selection of Jacques Réda's poems draws on his earliest major collections, widely regarded as among his finest: Amen, awarded the Priz Max Jacob, 1968; Récitatif, 1970; and La Tourne, 1975. These were a formative influence on the `new lyricism' that was to change the direction of French poetry in the 1980s. With an eye for detail and drama, his poems roam from day-to-day Paris to other times and places, striking a wry, pensive note that is at once personal and universal. They will appeal to readers who share Réda's belief that poetry lives through its rhythm, or `better still, le swing' (he is a respected jazz critic). The music is admirably captured in Jennie Feldman's translations.

 

Jacques Réda, born in 1929, was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix in 1993 for a lifetime's work. In 1978 he became a member of Gallimard's reading panel; he was editor of the `Nouvelle Revue Française' from 1987 to 1995. His prose work The Ruins of Paris appeared in translation by Mark Treharne in 1996. He received the Bourse Goncourt de la Poésie in 1999.

 

Jennie Feldman studied French at Oxford. Her first collection of poems The Lost Notebook is also published by Anvil. She lives in Haifa, Israel.