Jean Lescure je pense á vous...

My fascination with politically engaged literature was sparked while doing a degree in French Literature at the University of Glasgow, when I first read Louis Aragon’s stunning collection of poems Le Crève-cœur.  In this same year I also took an intensive seminar in Czech literature (in translation).  There were only a handful of us in the class, and our tutor somehow got us to commit to reading a novel or collection of stories or poems each week.  Since much of it was out of print, we’d meet in coffeehouses, circulating rumpled photocopies of the books to each other, mirroring the samizdat tradition from which they had sprung.

Now, many years later, the passion with which these writers wielded their pens still inspires and astonishes me.

When it came time to choose a topic for Phd research, I decided on a working title of The Poetry of the French Resistance as Propaganda.  While researching, I had the enormous privilege of meeting and corresponding with the Resistant and poet Jean Lescure, whose kindness and grace I will never forget.

Although I didn’t complete the thesis, I remain hopeful that the tea chests full of anecdotes and research materials we’ve been moving from loft to loft over the years will be at the heart of a novel the future.

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

When I still believed in ‘publish or perish’ here is some of what I wrote...

‘La Traduction anglaise de la poésie de la Résistance:  enjeux littéraires ou politiques?’  In Actes de Colloque, Presses Universitaires de Caen, Caen, France, 2001.

(Or: Were the stakes for English translations of French Resistance poetry literary or political?)

`Remembering Gabriel Peri: religious cult as communist propaganda.' (A contributed chapter in: `Remembering and Representing the Experience of War in Twentieth Century France', Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 2000     ISBN 0-7734-7458-7)

Needless to say, both come highly recommended, but are now sadly out of print and hideously expensive to buy.