Scansion of the Dark by Michèle Finck, trans. by Anthony Rudolf Broken Sleep Books

Scansion of the Dark is Anthony Rudolf’s translation of Michèle Finck’s sequence Balbuciendo, showcasing both the original French and the translated English. The poems are sombre and uncompromising, dwelling in permanent crisis, drawing inspiration from suffering and loss while yearning for transcendence. Finck, through Rudolf’s exquisite translations, weighs up an answer to Rilke’s pertinent question from Letters to a Young Poet: “Would you die if you were forbidden to write?”

PRAISE for Scansion of the Dark:

These poems are a tremendous testimony to a poet’s fierce encounter with language, and with silence. Translated with care and precision by Anthony Rudolf, the poems demand that we become viscerally engaged in the encounter and the struggle for language as the body reaches for sound and feeling. Michèle Finck offers us daring poems of violence and beauty that move writer and reader towards a new space for an articulation of loss.

   — Deryn Rees-Jones, And You, Helen

ABOUT Michèle Finck and Anthony Rudolf:

Michèle Finck is a poet, critic, translator, librettist, screen-writer, and professor at the University of Strasbourg. She received the Prix Louise-Labé (2015) and the Prix Max-Jacob (2018) for her poetry. She often collaborates with artists (painters, musicians, cineasts, choreographers). She has published essays on contemporary poetry (Yves Bonnefoy) and on the dialogue between poetry and other arts. A special number of the electronic magazine Nu(e) was devoted to her work in 2019 (number 69, 400 pages), edited by Patrick Née.

Broken Sleep Books