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Inauguration of the Sixteenth Festival at the Maison des écrivains of Paris, June 1993.
( (photos Bernard Bardinet)
Translation workshop at the 28th Festival at the library of the Maison de la poésie / Théâtre Molière, June 2005
The Festival franco-anglais de poésie originates in 1976 at Marly-le-Roy, where resident English poet, Lindy Henny, created an international festival of poetry, "The Festival of French English Spoken Poetry". Orientated towards spoken poetry, this festival presented four very lively annual events from 1976 to 1979, the last session being a translation conference.
Interrupted for two years, the Festival was reborn in 1982, modified under the present direction, and took the name Festival franco-anglais de poésie. Reciprocal translations between the guest poets became the driving force, while painters and sculptors, musicians and actors soon began to collaborate, making it a multi-arts festival, with poetry as the common denominator.
La Traductière was born in the midst of all this, in 1983, because of the need to keep track of the translation work carried out by the poets during the the Translation Workshops, as well as the graphic works created around the poems and the reflexions of the poets on poetic writing.
So today the Festival is in its 30th year, and "La Traductière" its 25th edition. Under the auspices of the Anglo-French Poetry Association, created in 1984, the two work together and complement each other, with a different theme every year (such as, coming in 2007, "Prose Sculpture / Sculpture sur prose").
The Festival, which emphasises presentation, supplies the review with cross-translations and with graphic works created for the "Reverberations" exhibition.
"La Traductière", which emphasises the written word, supplies the Festival with poems for the creation of musical works for the Poetry and Music presentation ; it also develops its own research topic such as last year's "The Translatable and the Untranslatable"â and reviews current Anglo-French poetry publications.
Yesterday and today, the same objective: to share with the public the living poetry of these two languages and their multiple horizons. We thank all those who have shared in this adventure since the beginning, all the creative artists who have joined us, contributing each in their way to the spread of poetry.
Jacques Rancourt,
director