Screwball by Anne Kawala and translated by Kit Schluter

This is poetry from France.

Screwball by Anne Kawala translated by Kit Schluter is published by Canarium Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780996982771E12.

Screwball, by Anne Kawala and translated by Kit Schluter from French, brings France French-language poetry into English through swerve, antic form, and the pleasures of a poem willing to move sideways. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for screwball motion, collision, play, and the refusal of lyric seriousness to behave politely, not as a fixed lesson about a country or period. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Screwball belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings a more volatile and playful French contemporary texture into the library.

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.