Guantanamo by Frank Smith and translated by Vanessa Place

This is poetry from France.

Guantanamo by Frank Smith translated by Vanessa Place is published by Les Figues Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2014.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78193425453E12.

Guantanamo, by Frank Smith and translated by Vanessa Place, is a book that enters one of the most morally charged names of the twenty-first century. The title leaves little room for pastoral misreading. This French work likely engages documentary pressure, state violence, detention, testimony, and the problem of what language can ethically do with institutional brutality. Place’s translation brings the text into English, where the name Guantanamo carries its own immediate political and legal force. I would read this book with caution and seriousness, not as lyric beautification of suffering, but as an attempt to confront the cold vocabularies through which power hides harm. Poetry here becomes a site of record, pressure, and refusal.

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.