Sun of Consciousness by Edouard Glissant and translated by Nathanaël

This is poetry from Martinique.

Sun of Consciousness by Edouard Glissant translated by Nathanaël is published by Nightboat Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2019.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781937658953E12.

Sun of Consciousness, by Edouard Glissant and translated by Nathanaël from French, brings Martinique French-language poetry into English through Glissant’s poetics of relation, opacity, and Caribbean consciousness. 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 sun, consciousness, relation, and the bright difficulty of thinking from an archipelago, 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. Sun of Consciousness belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives the library a philosophical Martinican lyric that changes how place is understood.

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.