In the introduction to her 2009 Bomb interview with the polymath author, Marcella Durand affirms that "Not many writers write from both the right and left brains, but Jacques Roubaud bridges that chasm much like an expert martial artist — in a way that makes it seem simple." "Or not," she continues:
Roubaud is an encompassing author. He writes through a full spectrum of the "simple" (i.e. his poetry for children) to mind-bogglingly dense pieces underpinned by mathematical concepts incomprehensible to many left-brained creative folks. After all, the title for his first book was a mathematical symbol — graphic and discrete, yet to explain what it means would take more words than I have been allotted.
We're proud to be able to share two videos of Roubaud on his PennSound author page. The earlier of these is a 2012 "Lecture de Poète" filmed by François Sarhan in Paris, wherein Roubaud reads excerpts from his collection, La forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas, que le coeur des humains: Cent cinquante poèmes, 1991-1998 (Éditions Gallimard, 1999). That's joined by a December 2019 celebration of the poet's then most recent book, Tridents (Éditions Nous, 2019), recorded at Paris' Librairie Texture. Éditions Nous publishers Benoît Casas and Patrizia Atzei were on hand to celebrate this latest book from their press, the sixth in total from Roubaud that they've published. This was also Roubaud's third time reading at the book store.
Both of these recordings can be found on our Jacques Roubaud author page. Click here to start watching.
