Paris, spring

This month’s new CBe title – following Lara Pawson’s Spent Light in January and Katy Evans-Bush’s Joe Hill Makes his Way into the Castle in February – is Paris 1935 by Jean Follain (1903–71), a prose book by a French poet I deeply admire. The translation by Kathleen Shields is the first full version in English. I think I first knew of the book from August Kleinzahler’s poem ‘Follain’s Paris’ in Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow, 1995, which mines phrases and scenes from Follain’s book. Since the start of CBe I’ve always wanted to publish Follain – back in 2008 I wrote to Christopher Middleton, asking if I could publish the translations of Follain’s poems that he was working on, but he had promised them to Peter Jay at Anvil – and now I have and it has been worth the wait.

Publication date is officially in mid-April but I’ll start sending out the pre-ordered copies this this week. There’ll be launch party on 23 April at the Centre for Literary Translation at Trinity College, Dublin – email I if you’d like to come. The photo on the cover is by Dora Maar. A Sonofabook blogpost giving the flavour of the book is below this one, here.

Next month’s title, available for pre-order on the website, is The End of Ends by the Polish theatre director Tadeusz Bradecki. It is about, writes Francis Spufford on the back cover, ‘nothing less than everything … Anyone miserable at being marooned on this island of cynical banter and self-protective irony should read The End of Ends to be reminded of what it sounds like when art is taken seriously.’ Non-fiction, but includes an embedded novel.

All new titles can be included in the Season Tickets (6 books of your choice for £45, 12 for £80) available from the home page of the website.

CBe will have a table at the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair on Saturday, 20 April at St Columba’s Church, Pont Street, London SW1X 0BD.