Gustaf Sobin - Luminous Débris meet and signing

We are pleased to host a reading and meeting with translators Elizabeth Deshays and Michel Roure of Gustaf Sobin’s book of poetry, “Luminous debris.” This is the first of his books to be translated into French. Gustaf’s children, Gabriel Sobin, sculptor, and Esther Sobin, photographer, will be present. This is a free event but we do ask that you reserve in advance as places are limited. https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/billets-gustaf-sobin-debris-lumineux-lecture-et-rencontre-avec-les-traducteurs-745430401397?aff=oddtdtcreator

A Boston-born poet who settled in Provence (Lacoste) near his friend René Char, Gustaf Sobin described himself as an “archaeological flâneur”. A tireless walker, he combed the orchards, vineyards and wheat fields of his adopted country, gleaning relics, “fresh as dreams”, that sprang from the soil. With the right poetic voice and the knowledge of an archaeologist, he sought to make them speak. 

In this collection of twenty-six short essays, Sobin leads an anthropological as well as a poetic reflection: what was the link between our ancestors and the land they inhabited? What worlds lie beneath our own, what do they reveal? From the Stone Age to Antiquity, from a tiny axe blade, “as slender as a trout” and four thousand years old, to an imposing aqueduct from the time of Claudius, he deciphers the debris collected as signs that also speak of our present. “For the past, correctly interpreted […], gives us – from time to time – dazzling visions of our reality.”

Gustaf Sobin (1935-2005), poet, novelist and essayist, also known for his translations of René Char, Henri Michaux and Paul Éluard, is the author of the collections Wind Crysalid’s Rattle (1980), Voyaging Portraits (1988), Towards the Blanched Alphabets (1998), In the Name of the Neither (2002). Débris lumineux is the first of his essays to be translated into French.
– Press release from Editions Pommier