Common Life by Stéphane Bouquet and translated by Lindsay Turner

This is poetry from France.

Common Life by Stéphane Bouquet translated by Lindsay Turner is published by Nightboat Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2023.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781643621531E12.

Common Life, by Stéphane Bouquet and translated by Lindsay Turner, has a title that feels refreshingly open-hearted. Common life can mean ordinary life, shared life, public life, or the life we keep failing to recognize as mutual. Bouquet’s poetry often brings together queer intimacy, civic feeling, friendship, politics, and the body’s daily weather. Turner’s translation gives English readers a contemporary French lyric that can think socially without abandoning pleasure. I would read this book for its refusal to make tenderness small. The common is not dull here. It is where desire, work, streets, bodies, and speech keep crossing. A poem can be private, yes, but it can also remind us that no one lives entirely alone.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.