Strong, R. 2008. A Little History of the English

Country Church. London: Vintage,

231–235.

MICHAEL SUTTON

Aston University

q 2013 Michael Suttonhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.825589

Chantiers du poeme. Premisses et pratiquesde la creation poetique moderne et con-temporaineHUGUES AZERAD, MICHAEL G. KELLY,NINA PARISH, & EMMA WAGSTAFF (Eds)Berne, Peter Lang, 2013362 pages, £45.00, ISBN: 978 3034308007

In favouring a disconcerting plurality of

‘chantiers’ over the traditionally accre-

dited ‘chant’, the editors of this stimulat-

ing volume of essays direct our attention

towards the endless process of contesta-

tion and destabilisation, rupture and

experimentation, subversion and rein-

vention, that has driven poetry’s multi-

faceted (un)making in France and

beyond since the middle of the last

century. Indeed, to borrow the distinc-

tion Angelos Triantafyllou draws in the

case of Michel Bulteau, the critic’s task

may be more akin to the seismographer’s

than to the cartographer’s, given the

generic uncertainty and polarised atti-

tudes contemporary poetic production

so frequently generates (Triantafyllou

himself refers rather sweepingly to ‘la

poesie-divertissement qui, de nos jours,

domine la scene franc�aise’ (127)).By and large, this volume sidesteps the

pitfalls of heated polemics that can all

too often obfuscate the breadth and

complexity of the other’s position.

Nevertheless, it is significant that bothClaude-Pierre Perez and Anne-Christine

Royere refer, under different section

headings, to the recent intervention byJacques Roubaud entitled ‘Obstination

de la poesie’, in which the statement ‘sansmots, pas de poesie’, formulated in the

defence of poetry, can no longer besimply taken as a truism. For Perez, the

reference serves as a counterpoint to his

discussion of Eduardo Kac’s and LouisBec’s non-verbal ‘bio-art’, in which he

allows that ‘[l’objet artistique] est faitavec des mots, mais pas seulement avec

des mots: avec des images aussi, et dessons, et des animaux, d’ou le terme de

biopoesie’ (156). In Royere’s study,mention of Roubaud’s rejection of a

poetic orality that has degenerated into a

meaningless spectacle of ‘vroum-vroum’throws into relief the Belgian poet Jean-

Pierre Verheggen’s aesthetics of the‘inSONscient’, that vies to some extent

with the performance of rap and slam.What Sarah Bewick terms ‘la poesie pure

dans ses formes diverses’ (181), as sheprobes the poetic dimension of Jean

Cocteau’s cinematography, posits poetry

as a transcendent entity as pertinent tothe screen or canvas or stage as it is to the

page, and no longer expressly beholdento words. In her analysis of Michel Butor

and Catherine Ernst’s botanical collab-orations, Nicole Biagioli argues for

poetry’s embrace of a ‘demarche holis-

tique impliquant tous les genres et tousles medias’ (204), but predicates such an

embrace, in the case of Butor, on atransgressive tension that remains inher-

ently discursive in nature. Other contri-butions highlight poetry’s hyphenated

state, from ‘poesie-peinture’ as locatedbyMarianne Froye in the work of Cadou,

Book Reviews 579

Follain and Frenaud, to Laurent Zim-

mermann’s deft dissection of Jerome

Game’s ‘video-poemes’. To differing

degrees, these essays demonstrate how,

with the rise of new technologies and the

increased interference between genres as

well as between art forms, poetry

continues to mutate through contami-

nation, hybridisation and, as it is

ushered from book to cyberspace,

delocalisation. To mutate even to the

point of the monstrous? Certainly, the

inclusion of Kac’s hapless bio-engineered

‘GFP Bunny’ in the domain of poetry

would seem to support the most

unbridled form of crossover and

contagion.Michel Deguy has long warned, not

only in poetry but in all spheres of social

interaction, against a ‘sortie du logos’, a

forsaking of language, of speech acts, of

figures of speech as the primary vehicle of

thought, at a time when the technolo-

gised image holds sway. Happily, while

pointing to certain excesses, this volume

remains very much anchored in post-war

practices of poetry that seek, beyond

previously defined boundaries and with

the evolving means available, to forge

new relations between word and world.

As Nina Parish indicates, the euphoria

sparked by the discovery of new technol-

ogies has yielded to more measured and

multi-layered instances of electronic

artistry mindful of the traditions it at

once challenges and cannot help, at

another level, but incorporate. Indeed, a

number of the practices featured in the

volume shun all spectacle, cultivate the

un-spectacular, free up our attention.

Froye’s focus on a poetics of humility is

complemented by Beatrice Bonhomme’s

assessment of James Sacre’s ‘[l]yrisme

anti-exaltatoire’ (244) or ‘poesie decep-

tive’ (248), that lays claim to the lowly

and the banal as it struggles to adhere

through language to the shared realm of

the ordinary and the everyday. Michael

Kelly teases out the juridical paradoxes of

Jacques Dupin’s self-effacing poetry as a

‘mode de presence qui dejouerait toute

notion instrumentalisable de la presence’

(316), as a writing bent on reconciling

‘l’exposition et la non-comparution’

(317). The voices of francophone

women poets, often consigned to the

margins on account of their sex and their

origins, receive welcome attention from

Thanh-Van Ton-That and Margaret

Braswell (although the inclusion of the

Quebec poet Claude Beausoleil in the

former’s panorama begs some interesting

questions!). The volume comprises four

sections (dealing respectively with the

importance of poetic questioning, with

the imprint of origins in poetry, with the

links between text and image, and with

orality and the poetics of voice), framed

by a critical contribution from Mary Ann

Caws and a creative one from Beatrice

Bonhomme. Together with the compa-

nion special issue of French Forum (vol.

37, nos. 1–2, Winter/Spring 2012)

brought forth by the same editors, it

affords a sturdy and rounded grasp of the

more salient aesthetic, ethical and politi-

cal aspects of contemporary poetic

practice in French.

MICHAEL BROPHY

University College Dublin

q 2013 Michael Brophyhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2013.831052

580 Book Reviews