Phototaxis by Olivia Tapiero and translated by Kit Schluter

This is poetry from Canada.

Phototaxis by Olivia Tapiero translated by Kit Schluter is published by Nightboat Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781643621111E12.

Phototaxis, translated from the French by Kit Schluter, brings Olivia Tapiero’s French-language work into English through Nightboat Books. Published in 2021, it is best approached as a book of encounter rather than as a book to solve. Tapiero’s title borrows from the movement toward light, and that gives the book a strange biological pressure: the poem as organism, sensor, exposure. I would not read this as a puzzle with a hidden answer. Read it for pressure, for texture, for the place where a line suddenly becomes stranger than its apparent subject. The book matters because it keeps the translated poem alive as encounter, not summary, and because Canada enters the shelf through music rather than report.

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.