Poems

The Manuscript

Notes

This prose poem - as playful as it is profound - was a real delight to translate. In our version, we tried to capture some of the irreverance of the original French - such as in the opening lines, where we described Satan as 'a midget, a gossip and a thief to boot'.

'Iblis', by the way, is the name given to Satan in The Koran: a sly dig at religion from the secular poet when he writes says that the Devil is called, 'Iblis to his friends'.

Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator