Awards

• Established in 1985 after the legacy of Adrien Bertrand (1914 Prix Goncourt), this prize is awarded to a poet for their entire body of work and not for a specific collection, as is the case for the other Academy prizes.

Overview

The Hand of the Hand brings us to a future or an alternate universe in which earth, animal, and human intertwine—where stomachs have meadows, milk pours itself over trees, and flies wash the dead. Vazquez pulls deceptively simple, bare language into puzzling formations, creating an ambient unease. By turns lyrical and absurd, The Hand of the Hand explores the mystery and strangeness of what it means to be both speech and body, tongue and dirt.

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9781946604453

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Author Information

Laura Vazquez (1986–) is a French poet. A 2023 recipient of the Prix Goncourt, considered the highest literary honor in France, she has published seven poetry collections since her 2014 debut with La Main de la main, which itself won her the Prix de la Vocation for young poets. She leads the poetry journal Muscle, where she has published poets such as Cole Swensen, Kenneth Goldsmith, Michèle Métail, Ben Lerner, Tao Lin, Santiago Papasquiaro, and Frédéric Forte. Her poetry, characterized by its polyvocal and sonic play with spare language, has previously been translated into eight languages, not including English. Limited Connection Collective/Connexion Limitée is a French-American translation collective founded in 2019, out of a desire to open contemporary US-American poetics to the French literary scene and vice-versa. Currently, the collective is based in France, the United States, and Canada. They have translated works by poets such as Mónica de la Torre, Cole Swensen, Eleni Sikelianos, Kay Gabriel, and Adrienne Rich into French; Laura Vasquez’s The Hand of the Hand is their first translation from French to English. Shira Abramovich is a translator, editor, and interdisciplinary researcher in Montréal. Her work has appeared in Asymptote, Kernel Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Reboot, among others. With Limited Connection Collective, she is the co-translator of The Happy End/All Welcome by Mónica de la Torre (Joca Seria, 2022) and The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich (L’Arche, 2025). Her translation and research has been recognized by the Fulbright Scholarship and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She is very happy with her first name. Lénaïg Cariou is a poet, translator and critic. As a poet, she published À main levée (LansKine) and La poésie n’est pas une bonne fille (Le Coin de la rue de l’Enfer, with Liliane Giraudon and Maxime Hortense Pascal) ; her third book, les dires (P.O.L.) is forthcoming. With Limited Connection Collective, she translates North American poetry into French and vice versa; together, they translated works by Cole Swensen, Mónica de la Torre, Eleni Sikelianos, Laura Vazquez, Adrienne Rich, and Kay Gabriel. Her critical work focuses on French and American contemporary poetry; she is a PhD candidate at Université Paris 8 / Université Paris Cité, and received the Young Researcher Prize from Fondation des Treilles for her current research on poetry.

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