Overview

A richly imagined, physically charged poetry collection in which history, myth, and protest are transformed into lyrical gestures. Sylvie Kandé's Gestuary offers a collection of gestures—of death and life, of tenderness and brutality—that fractures the flow of time. Senegalese riflemen from World War I are juxtaposed with migrants at borders who sew their lips shut in protest over immigration policies. In dream-like sequences, the dead refuse to stay underground and ""push against the fence / that swings between our realm and theirs."" Inspired by unexpected sources, including jazz, sculpture, the legacy of the slave trade, proverbs, and elements of Diola culture, Kandé's poems are rich in musicality and sophisticated syntax, rendered into a lyrical and luminous English by Nancy Naomi Carlson.

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9781803096087

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Born in Paris to a French mother and a Senegalese father, Sylvie Kandé is the author of three acclaimed poetry collections. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet and translator whose translation of Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.   

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