To Each Unfolding Leaf ― Selected Poems 1976-2015

Poetry. Translated from the French by John Taylor in a bilingual edition. This book offers a representative selection of Pierre Voélin's poetry, ranging from his early books Sur la mort brève / On Brief Death (1984) and Les Bois calmés / The Calmed Woods (1987) to recent works such as Y. (2015) and Des voix dans l'autre langue / Voices in the Other Language (2015). In other words, since La Nuit osseuse (The Bony Night) section of On Brief Death was written during the years 1976- 1980, this SELECTED POEMS spans four decades and reveals the Swiss poet's recurrent themes of amorous exaltation (and loss), an individual's relationship to nature (and especially to a rural environment), the possibilities of a spiritual quest in the contemporary world, as well as the writer's role (or vulnerability) with respect to political iniquity or persecution. Up to now, Voélin has remained very little known in English-speaking countries. Yet he is one of the most important figures in contemporary Swiss francophone poetry. Born in 1949 in the village of Courgenay and then raised in the nearby small town of Porrentruy, both of which are located in the hilly Jura region of Switzerland, Voélin is a key poet in a generation that also comprises Frédéric Wanderlère (b. 1949), François Debluë (b. 1950), José-Flore Tappy (b. 1954), and Sylviane Dupuis (b. 1956). It is a generation that has sometimes chosen thematic directions differing from those taken by their Swiss mentors, namely Anne Perrier (b. 1922), Philippe Jaccottet (b. 1925) and Pierre Chappuis (b. 1930), and that has conceived new poetics to continue to question man's place in the cosmos.