Requiem de guerre

Rights sold

• Argentine

Awards
Prix Goncourt de la Poésie Robert Sabatier 2017
Grand Prix National de la Poésie 2017

Presentation

This work by Franck Venaille is written against the flow of optimistic thinking. The illness world is never described but only suggested, brought to “normal” life and crossed by contradictory thoughts: buffoonery, pastiche, derision, breach of poetic moral standards. The writing doesn’t take power, it suggests, offers, rebel against the world if need be. That’s the reason why Enrico Berlinguer is present, with the red flag of failed revolutions, but also a man haunted by his childhood and indelible landscapes. Not forgetting the presence of a true/false Simon Freude, psychoanalyst and bonesetter, and at last the one who is like a narrator’s brother, François Villon.

In line with Chaos, Ça, C’est-à-dire and La bataille des éperons d’or, Requiem de guerre shows Franck Venaille subjecting poetic writing to legitimate and intense war that he intends to bring to completion.

Franck Venaille was born in Paris in 1936. In each successive book, he is establishing himself as one of most important voice of contemporaneous poetry. In 2011, he received the Great Poetry Prize of French Academy for his whole work.