In The Glittering Maw, a translation by writing alumna C. Francis Fisher ’23 of Syrian-Jewish surrealist poet Joyce Mansour, will be published by World Poetry in May 2024.
Mansour has been regarded by Andre Bréton as the preeminent Surrealist of the post-war period. Many of her poems are centered in themes of femininity, desire, and the dream world. Some of her poems even describe the female ability to inflict violence. One such poem reads: “Why tear fire from the impalpable sky / When it already grows and smolders in me / Why throw your glove into the crowd / Tomorrow is a livid stump.”
Joyce Mansour was born in England and shortly after, moved with her family to Cairo, Egypt. In 1953, she moved to Paris where she became embedded in the Parisian postwar surrealist scene. She published sixteen books of poetry as well as some dramatic writing and prose pieces before her death in 1986. This is Fisher’s first published translation and will feature an introduction by surrealist scholar Mary Ann Caws.
"C. Francis Fisher’s translations of Joyce Mansour’s later poems give fresh voice to a fierce, passionate, sensuous, scandalous cry that has strained to be heard in the Anglophone world for over half a century,” writes translator Mark Polizzotti. “It’s about time."
“Most of my life has been spent in ignorance of Mansour’s eccentric and eruptive genius,” says writer Wayne Koestenbaum. “Thanks to this indispensable new translation, I can make amends, and hug close to me this most corporeal and threshold-traversing poet, who seems, like Louise Bourgeois, to be the apostle of fleshly metamorphosis.”
In the Glittering Maw is available for preorder here.
C. Francis Fisher is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. Her writing can be found in Brooklyn Rail, the Yale Review, PANK Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Pacifica Literary Review, Asymptote, and elsewhere. Her poem ‘Self-Portrait at 25’ received the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize.
