Ian Monk
INTERLUDES, 2021
Translated by Philip Terry
‘If I were you I wouldn’t start from here’
Ian Monk has been writing primarily in French since the late 1990s. His poetry collection 14 x 14, published in Belgium by L’Âne Qui Butine, consists of fourteen long poems, each composed of fourteen sonnets. Between each poem Monk includes an ‘entracte’, adding a prelude and a coda. Many of these shorter pieces are based on the sestina form, with its six permutating end-words, which Monk spins into dazzling new forms and combinations. These are the pieces gathered here, translated into English under the title Interludes.
‘Few writers in the twenty-first century have done more than Ian Monk to extend the imaginative possibilities of the sestina. These finely-tuned ‘interludes’, translated by Philip Terry so as to leave the word-play intact, once again demonstrate Monk’s mastery of this and other forms.’
–> Jacques Roubaud
Ian Monk has been a member of the Oulipo since 1998, and is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963-2018, which he edited with Daniel Levin Becker, was published by McSweeney’s in 2018.
Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a translator and poet. He is currently translating Ice Age signs from the caves at Lascaux. The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020.
Ian Monk has been writing primarily in French since the late 1990s. His poetry collection 14 x 14, published in Belgium by L’Âne Qui Butine, consists of fourteen long poems, each composed of fourteen sonnets. Between each poem Monk includes an ‘entracte’, adding a prelude and a coda. Many of these shorter pieces are based on the sestina form, with its six permutating end-words, which Monk spins into dazzling new forms and combinations. These are the pieces gathered here, translated into English under the title Interludes.
‘Few writers in the twenty-first century have done more than Ian Monk to extend the imaginative possibilities of the sestina. These finely-tuned ‘interludes’, translated by Philip Terry so as to leave the word-play intact, once again demonstrate Monk’s mastery of this and other forms.’
–> Jacques Roubaud
Ian Monk has been a member of the Oulipo since 1998, and is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963-2018, which he edited with Daniel Levin Becker, was published by McSweeney’s in 2018.
Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a translator and poet. He is currently translating Ice Age signs from the caves at Lascaux. The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020.
40 pages
140 mm x 92 mm, printed inside cover
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-84-7
£5.00
Next Book ->
140 mm x 92 mm, printed inside cover
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-84-7
£5.00
Next Book ->