In Memoriam: Pierre Alferi (1963–2023)

We start this week off by noting the death of Pierre Alferi, described by Fabrice Gabriel in his Le Monde obituary as "a wonderfully idiosyncratic and surprisingly multi-faceted author, whose books, like his many other works, were a regular and somewhat mischievous addition to a body of work that was always in motion – vibrant to the extreme, at the crossroads of poetry, the novel, cinema, music, philosophy, the visual arts and even, one might say, science and technology." Alferi passed away on August 16th at the age of 60.

Writing at Jacket2, our own Charles Bernstein shares his memories of Alferi, whom he first met "at the Objectivist conference at Royaumont in 1989. He goes to highlight Alferi's work as both translator and poet, offering this blurb for the  forthcoming collection In the Street, translated by Cole Swensen:

Personification meets enigma in the ellipsis of phantomine. Pierre Alferi’s poems, in Cole Swensen’s translations are rapiers that cut to the quick of political obscenity and ethical necessity, as if the two are locked in a death embrace, until poetry do them part. “It’s here that we meet”—on this street, in these words, at that parting. 

While we do not have a proper PennSound author page for Alferi, his work can be found in several places throughout the archive. Most prominent is Bernstein's essay "Reznikoff's Nearness," from the aforementioned 1989 Objectivist conference. He performed an "early talking version" of the essay, while "Emmanuel Hocquard [gave] a long introduction, and I [was] simultaneously translated (with commentary!) by Pierre Alferi." Alferi reads his own work at a 2009 event for the Double Change reading series in Paris, and finally, on the EPC Dance event page, one of the filmed performances, choreographer Sarah Burns' Do Not Forget It, employs the text of Alferi's poem "Ne I'oublie pas." Follow the links above to listen to each of these recordings.