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Liliane Giraudon was born in Marseille in 1946. She continues to live and work in Marseille, and her writing is inseparable from the place, shaped by the vibrant community of poets and writers and artists Giraudon has herself shaped, as well as by the city's gritty and diverse cosmopolitanism. Giraudon's many books have, since 1982, been primarily published by France's P.O.L. editions. Giraudon has also been instrumental as an editor for influential reviews such as Banana Split, Action Potique, and If. She performs and collaborates widely, including with Nanni Balastrini, Henri Delui, Jean-Jacques Viton, and many others. Two of her books (Fur and Pallaksh, Pallaksh)were published in English by Sun & Moon Press in 1992 and 1994, respectively. She lives in Marseille, France.
Lindsay Turner is the author of the poetry collections Songs & Ballads (Prelude Books, 2018) and The Upstate (University of Chicago Press, 2023). She has twice received French Voices awards for her translations from the French, which include books of poetry and philosophy by Stphane Bouquet, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Anne Duforumantelle, Ryoko Sekiguchi, and others. She is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
Sarah Riggs is a poet and multivalent artist. Her most recent book The Nerve Epistle appeared in 2021. Translation is one of her arts, for which she received a Griffin prize with Etel Adnan, and Best Translated Book Award, also for Adnan's Time (Nightboat, 2019). Riggs lives in Brooklyn, after many years in Paris.Author residence: Marseille, France
"Over the course of her long and varied career, Liliane Giraudon
has proven to be one of the most singular voices of the twentieth
century, taking on the still-unanswered questions that have marked
our time. Her work relentlessly deconstructs dominant
representations, addresses itself to issues of gender and class,
and investigates the political and philosophical implications of
these issues, which also provide the particular form for her texts.
That form is at the heart of an inclusive, multiple aesthetic,
incorporating a wide range of materials and artistic practices:
collage, drawing, documentary, citation, notetaking, photography,
and performance." ―Amandine André "For more than four
decades, the French poet Liliane Giraudon has written experimental,
sensual, and politically demanding work. . . [Love is Colder Than
the Lake] offers an opportunity to delve into the long and rich
career of this exceptional poet."—Léon Pradeau, Poetry
Foundation
"This collection of rueful, frank, breezily wanton love poems by a
notable contemporary French poet has almost none of the hiccups and
irregularities one expects from a translated work. (The original
French isn’t provided, so it’s unclear what liberties Turner is
taking, but whatever they are, she should keep taking
them.)" ―David Orr, The New York Times"[Giraudon’s] voice is
hypnotic, inscrutable, unique. A trip through one of her narratives
is like a somnambular stroll through a rain-soaked ravine with an
unreadable road map; a ramble in fugue-state through a wilderness
where signposts are written in the language of emotion and the
logic of the heart." —Gilbert Albert-Gilbert “For half a
century, Giraudon’s incisive brilliance has driven French poetry
forward. Here, she investigates the work of art in an age of global
deperdition. Banalities stumble into horror. Text, collage, and
film bottom out into their constitutive unknowns. And ghosts
including Fassbinder, Niedecker, and Maier compel us to look the
Real in the eye. Riggs and Turner match Giraudon’s pace and
polyphony and affirm that poetry is the mode of perception we need
now.” —Teresa Villa-Ignacio
“Vivid and flickering, this book by the leading light of
contemporary experimental feminist poetics, Liliane Giraudon, is a
live stream of striking images, both cinematic and hypnotizing. As
it progresses, the recurrent image of the lake accumulates greater
and greater charge as its possibilities, metaphoric, symbolic, and
literal, proliferate. Giraudon grapples here with the tremendous
weight of history in its many theaters, again both literal and
figurative. The cast of characters is epic, the logic, poetic, and
the whole, riveting. Riggs’ and Turner’s translation is as
inventive as the work itself, perfectly capturing all its urgency,
wry wit, and sharp perceptions—a remarkable feat.” —Cole
Swensen
“A propulsive pastiche of ‘accumulated ghosts’ that shows that when
‘the grotesque has overcome all the rest,’ we can dig our way out
through language, image, each other. An exploration of the past
selves we are constructed on, and a cinematic, surprising staging
of grief and lost love rendered electrically and filled with
pleasing pops of ‘shrimp-pink’ and ‘crushing fierce yellows’ by
translator-poet duo Sarah Riggs and Lindsay Turner who deftly braid
together words of the English language to make a new one for
Liliane Giraudon.” —Emma Ramadan
"Giraudon’s singular voice makes Love is Colder Than the Lake a
compelling and memorable read. . . The reader submerges herself in
Giraudon’s language and is rewarded with the bliss of drowning."
—Derek Graf, West Trade Review
"In Love is Colder than the Lake, Liliane Giraudon sets out on
an experimental expedition wielding her anarcho-queer pen,
capturing instant Polaroids of life’s intricacies and violence. Her
writing engages with these snapshots, gradually peeling away layers
of silver halide to distill her final image — the metaphorical
lake, a repository of her intellect." —Lucia Tian, Columbia
Journal of Literary Criticism
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