SPD BOOK LINK HERE.Congratulations to Alta Ifland, whose bilingual collection of prose poems, Voice of Ice / Voix de Glace, has been selected as the 2008 winner of the Louis Guillaume Prize for Prose Poems (Prix Louis Guillaume du Poème en Prose 2008).
The Louis Guillaume Prize for Prose Poems is awarded each year for a collection of prose poems written in French. Selected by an eleven-member jury, it is a French prize awarded to a Francophone writer of any nationality. The prize is named after Louis Guillaume (1907-1971) who defined the prose poem as “an organic whole, a crystallized structure whose end is neither that of a narrative nor of a morality tale [and which] must concentrate all the qualities of the modern poem: condensation and speed of imagery [… ].” Voice of Ice / Voix de Glace will be added to the collection of previous award-winning titles, housed at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. (Info: http://www.louis-guillaume.com/)
Voix de Glace / Voice of Ice was published by Les Figues as part of our TrenchArt Parapet series. Of the book, poet Wanda Coleman says Ifland "creates and redreams the hauntingly surreal emotional landscapes of dislocation, desolate distances, and Redonesque disjuncture." Poet Terry Ehret says "Ifland’s poems take us into 'the depths of all things rhymed,' where the known world becomes unknowable."
About Alta Ifland:
Originally from Eastern Europe, Alta Ifland immigrated to the States in 1991. Between 1995 and 1996 she studied philosophy in France, then returned to the States where she received a PhD in French language and literature, and taught for several years at several universities. After her return from France she began to write in French (her second language), but published little. In 2004 she left academia and became a full-time writer and literary translator. The same year, she wrote Voix de Glace / Voice of Ice, a bilingual collection of prose poems, whose original is in French and whose translation into English (her third language) was done in parallel with the original. Since then she has been writing mostly in English; she has recently finished a book of short stories, Death-in-a-Box, and another collection of prose poems, The Snail’s Song.
SPD has great books. But you knew that.
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