Guillaume Apollinaire and French Poetry of the First World War

on Wednesday 18 March 2015, Europe House

Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU

6.30 – 8.30 pm
(the event itself will start promptly at 7.00 pm and run through till 8.30pm)

To mark the celebration of la semaine de la francophonie, the European Commission Representation in the UK, in partnership with the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation and the Institut Français (London) is delighted to invite you to a fascinating evening of poetry focusing on the French experience of the First World War and the literature it produced.

Invaded by Germany in 1914, and the scene of much of the fighting on the Western Front, France experienced the First World War as a great national calamity. Just as the war was described in the UK by the war poets, in France the conflict resulted in a wide range of powerful literary responses – patriotic, angry, erotic, disillusioned, savage, and distraught. Many of these voices are little known, or are only now being heard again.

This fascinating event will explore French poetic responses to the war, both from the front line and on the home front. It will combine short illustrated presentations and selected readings of poems in both French and English translation.

With a special focus on the brilliant poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who served as both as an artilleryman and infantry officer, the event will also feature work by a range of other poets, male and female, who together shed light on the distinctive responses of French writers to the horrors of modern warfare.

David Hunter is author of Apollinaire in the Great War 1914-1918, published in early 2015 by Peter Owen Publishers. He is also on the board of the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation.

Stephen Romer is a poet, translator and academic, whose collection Yellow Studio was published by Carcanet in 2008. He has translated French Decadent Tales for OUP and is the editor of Twentieth-century French Poems (Faber) and Into the Deep Street: 7 Modern French Poets (Anvil).

Dylan Read is a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq international theatre school in Paris. He performs in both French and English in the UK and abroad. He is currently working on a theatre piece based on Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen.

For further information see link below:

Guillaume Apollinaire and French Poetry of the First World War