Contemporary poetry and transatlantic poetics at the Royaumont Translation Seminars (1983-2000): an experimental language laboratory

Lang Abigail (1)

1 LARCA UMR 8225 - Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Cultures Anglophones

From 1983 to 2000, the Abbaye de Royaumont in the outskirts of Paris hosted an original project for the collaborative translation of contemporary poetry. Its aims were, firstly, to reduce the time-lag plaguing the reception of foreign works in France; secondly, to entrust the translation to French poets, who worked in the presence of the invited foreign poet; and thirdly, to publish foreign poets, thus creating a collection of works by contemporary poets from around the world. Almost 50 volumes were published and the final anthology includes 93 poets, a quarter of whom are from the United-States. This chapter will analyze the role that Royaumont played in fostering a transatlantic community of French and American poets, in particular. It will also demonstrate how the translation seminars facilitated dialogue between different generations of French poets, offering an alternative to the model of the literary coterie. Finally, it will show how Royaumont was instrumental in introducing translation as a critical and creative process to different generations of poets.

Mots clés: contemporary poetry; collaborative translation; French poetry; American poetry; Emmanuel Hocquard; Fondation Royaumont; literal translation; translation workshops

Domaines: Littératures

Lang Abigail. Contemporary poetry and transatlantic poetics at the Royaumont Translation Seminars (1983-2000): an experimental language laboratory. Anthony Cordingley, Céline Frigau Manning. Collaborative Translation. From the Renaissance to the Digital Age, Bloomsbury, 2016, Bloomsbury Advances in Translation, 9781350006027. ⟨hal-01417774⟩