Contemporary French Poetry: In Conversation with Suzanne Doppelt

Mois de la Francophonie 2023

One of the major voices in contemporary French poetry, Suzanne Doppelt will discuss her creative practice with Dr Jeff Barda, Lecturer in French Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Her work, combining literature and photography, revolves around perceptions and ways of seeing. In her latest book Et tout soudain en rien, she explores the multiplicity of the gaze through the photographic enigma in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up.

The discussion will be interspersed with readings of poems by Suzanne Doppelt

Fri 3 Mar 6.30pm | in French & English | £7 standard, £5 members

This event is organised as part of a series of seminars taking place in 2022-23 and supported by the UK Association for Modern and Contemporary France’s Visiting Scholars’ Seminar Series fund.
 

 

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About our guests:
 
Suzanne Doppelt writes and sometimes takes photographs. She has published ten books with POL editions. From Totem (2002) to Et tout soudain en rien (2022) she is primarily concerned with what we see. Lazy Suzie revolves around anamorphosis; Amusements de mécanique puts forward a series of clues to be deciphered; Vak spectra shows the interior of a house from multiple angles; Rien à cette magie is inspired by Chardin’s soap bubbles; Meta donna is about an Apulian ritual in the 1960s centered around a tarantula and its venom. Her latest book Et tout soudain en rien is inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up.
 
Dr Jeff Barda is a Lecturer in French Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Experimentation and the Lyric in Contemporary French Poetry (Palgrave, 2019) and the co-editor with Daniel Finch-Race of Textures: Processus et événements dans la création poétique moderne et contemporaine (Peter Lang, 2015). He has recently published articles on Christophe Tarkos, Michèle Métail, Anne-James Chaton, Franck Leibovici, Jacques-Henri Michot; on the relationship between media and contemporary literature, and the history of the avant-gardes. In October 2021, he was awarded the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize in the category ‘Literature in languages other than English’ for Experimentation and the Lyric in Contemporary French Poetry (Palgrave, 2019).