new from above/ground press: I am a language you are the sound device, by Sandra Moussempès (translated by Eléna Rivera

I am a language you are the sound device
Sandra Moussempès
translated by Eléna Rivera
$5

What connection are we looking for while watching a film,
while reading a poem?
anticipation or eloquence
using a repetitive metaphor

enjambment                “caesura”

the sequences between sound and sense, the poetry of affect,
the juxtaposition of the poem, time and light, fade(s) to black,
point of view, fragment, the metric, subtraction

what’s the difference between exorcism and the close-up
a way of writing in the dark (the visual narrative)

at first it’s a composition of living matter        barely
resized
our thoughts noted        inside the sculpted house

these fragments in a film-loop

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover photograph by Russell Switzer, 2019

Sandra Moussempès is a poet and vocal artist, born in Paris in 1965, and former resident of the Villa Medici. She has published twelve books of poetry including : Cassandre à bout portant (Poésie/Flammarion, 2021), Cinéma de L’affect (Boucles de voix off pour film fantôme) (L’Attente, 2020), Colloque des Télépathes & CD Post-Gradiva (L’Attente 2017), and Sunny girls (Poésie/Flammarion 2015). As a sound and vocal artist, she has recorded four albums and has performed at the Centre Pompidou, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, and MAMCO in Geneva, among others. above/ground press also published a selection from Sunny girls, translated by Eléna Rivera (2017).

Eléna Rivera was born in Mexico City and raised in Paris. Her most recent book of poetry is Epic Series (Shearsman Books, 2020). Her translation of Bernard Noël’s The Rest of the Voyage (Graywolf, 2011) received the Robert Fagles Translation Prize. She also translated Noël’s The Ink’s Path (Cadastre8zéro, 2018), Isabelle Baladine Howald’s Hantôme (forthcoming Black Square Editions, 2021) and Isabelle Garron’s Body Was (forthcoming, Litmus Press, 2021). She received a National Endowment for the Arts in translation and fellowships from MacDowell (2020) and the Trelex Paris Poetry Residency (2019).

This is their second above/ground press chapbook, after From: Sunny girls (2017).

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