Book of the Snow

Shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize 2011. The first English translation of this winner of the 1991 Max-Jacob Prize. The Book of the Snow consists of 112 short poems inspired by a bleak and beautiful natural landscape, where the falling snow gives rise to a sequence of poems that are both lyrical and suffused with irony, allusion and paradox. The Book of the Snow is Jacqmin's twelfth poetry collection and is translated by Philip Mosley. François Jacqmin was born in 1929 in Belgium and spent his formative years in England during the Second World War, writing his first poems in English. His distinctive identity as a writer is inspired primarily by botany and metaphysics. Philip Mosley is Professor of English, Communications, and Comparative Literature at Penn State University. As well as being a highly-regarded translator, he is author of books on Maurice Maeterlinck, Georges Rodenbach, Ingmar Bergman and Belgian cinema.