Poetry Reading by Philippe Beck

Philippe Beck will read a selection of poems (French with English translations), including some from his latest collection, Ryrkaïpii (Flammarion, 2023).

Philippe Beck is one of the most prolific and compelling contemporary poets in the French language. His poetry is both erudite and playful, grappling with its own formal questioning, through encounters with the other arts and engagement with a wealth of cultures and literary traditions, both European and non-European. His poems are ‘handshakes' inviting their readers to let themselves be guided towards the frontiers of literature and other fields of enquiry: history, philosophy, anthropology, musicology, the visual and sculptural arts…, etc.
Philippe Beck's poetic practice has won him numerous awards and it has been described as ‘complex, haunting, and profoundly literary' in The Guardian (2016). His work has been translated into English, German, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and Flemish. He has himself translated Walter Benjamin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, F.W. von Schelling and Karl Philipp Moritz.
This reading is one of the events organised as part of his stay at St Andrews as Writer in Residence.