The Colour / Duets

Author: André du Bouchet / Iliassa Sequin

Publisher: Distance No Object (2023)

Iliassa Sequin met André du Bouchet in Paris in the later 1960s, and the two poets exchanged letters, poems, and translations for more than thirty years. The Colour (La Couleur) was composed in 1973-4 for a catalogue of Bram van Velde lithographs. Sequin began translating it soon after the initial publication, and worked on her version intermittently until her death in 2019. Appearing here in English for the first time, it is joined by three poems from du Bouchet’s Laisses (1979), which she began translating in the 1980s.

The Colour includes facing-page French and English texts, and a reproduction of van Velde’s frontispiece for the original publication. The note on the text gives furtherbiographical and bibliographic context.

Sequin began assembling Duets after du Bouchet’s death in 2001. It consists of 25 letters to the French poet – some unsent, some fragments of drafts – providing a commentary on the process of translation, and on Sequin’s memories of the circle of poets around L’Éphémère journal, including Paul Celan. Part ‘hide and seek’, part ‘souvenir of poetry’, part ‘eruption of grief’, this is a singular defence of poetry and testament to poetic friendship.