In the flesh of the text: the poetry of Marie-Claire Bancquart

This closely focused study of the inner movements, dynamic tensions and tactile richness of an intensely sensual but deeply searching poetry, is the first full-length monograph devoted to one of France¿s foremost contemporary woman poets. Marie-Claire Bancquart¿s work explores, primarily through the vulnerabilities and sensitivities of the body (hence this book¿s `carnal¿ title), the possibility of releasing a cry: a salvation of language and spirit from indifference, abstraction and dehumanisation, a celebration of a moment¿s reunion with the recreative vitality of the physical universe, an act of love in its most private yet cosmic expression. Bancquart has described her language as a `braille of the living¿: minimal, interrupted and riddled with obscurities and gaps of the unsayable, but apprehending the world and composing its significance in a singularly tactile translation. This study will appeal to those keen to discover one of the most original voices of present-day European poetry, the distinctive poetic resonances of one of its most self-aware and vibrant female sensibilities, and the provocative orientations of `new writing¿ traversed by the dilemmas and paradoxes of our own era.