On April 20, join us for an evening of poetry with French poet Marie de Quatrebarbes and American poet and translator Lindsay Turner, presented in partnership with World Poetry Books, to celebrate the debut translation in English of Marie de Quatrebarbes’ novel The Vitals (Les vivres, P.O.L, 2021; trans. by Aiden Farrell, World Poetry, 2025).

The event will feature bilingual readings from their recent works, offering audiences an opportunity to encounter two singular poetic voices in dialogue across languages.

 The Vitals, published in 2025 by World Poetry and translated by Aiden Farrell, is Marie de Quatrebarbes’ début in English translation. The Vitals is an elegiac long poem written in the form of a fragmentary journal that tracks the loss of a loved one.

How to unremember the details of grief in order to think, to exist past its consuming intensity? In intricately nested poem-boxes, Marie de Quatrebarbes disorders the sequences of experience to find new possibility in how to write into and of infinite moments within the imposed boundaries of a year. “I form a word for something with my mouth. I disremember myself.” And in that dis-remembering, she discovers subtle tensions between interpretation, explanation, and where/when perception might actually allow for illumination. “My gaze becomes what it is,” she writes, and Aiden Farrell’s translations keep up, conveying in new language the complexity of life’s increasing accumulation of time.

Marie de Quatrebarbes (b. 1984) is the author of several books of poetry, as well as a novel inspired by the life of Aby Warburg, and the recipient of the 2020 Paul-Verlaine Prize from the Academie Française. She published La tête et les cornes, a poetry and translation review, republished the complete poems of Michel Couturier (L’ablatif absolu, La tête et les cornes), and edited an anthology dedicated to contemporary poetry by young French women (Madame tout le monde, Le Corridor bleu). The Vitals (World Poetry, 2025) is her first book in English translation. Since 2023, she is the co-manager of the French publishing house Éditions Corti. She lives and works in Paris.

Lindsay Turner is a poet and translator whose work moves between English and French. The author of the poetry collection The Upstate and translator of numerous contemporary Francophone writers, she brings to her writing a distinctive attention to voice, rhythm, and the textures of place and language.

Aiden Farrell is a poet, translator, editor, and educator. He has published two chapbooks: lilac lilac (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs) and organismalgorithm (Fence), and his poetry and translations have been featured in Amygdala, Denver Quarterly, Spectra Poets, Asphalte Magazine, Wonder, and elsewhere. His first book of translation—Marie de Quatrebarbes’s The Vitals—was published by World Poetry in 2025. Born in Paris and raised between three continents, Aiden lives in Brooklyn.

The evening will include readings in French and English, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A.

This event is free. Click here to register.