HAUS FÜR POESIE

Only two of his works have so far been published in German, both brilliantly translated from the French by Rike Bolte: his novel Belle Merveille (2017), published under the title Was für ein Wunder by Litradukt in 2020 – with both the novel and its translation receiving the International Literature Award of Haus der Kulturen der Welt – addresses the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in which around 250,000 people lost their lives. In addition, a first selection of his poems appeared in 2018 under the title Die größte Raubkatze / Le plus grand des félins (Litradukt 2018).

Rike Bolte has now translated several poems from Noël’s latest collection Paons (Eng. Peacocks; Au Diable Vauvert 2026) into German for Poesiefestival Berlin.

In this collection, the city of Port-au-Prince plays an important role: “(...) this city tattooed by bullets / (...) this city eaten away by gangs / decomposed by star‑gravediggers.” A city that, as Noël writes in one of the dedications at the beginning of the book, dreams of escaping from itself. The author himself dreams of this escape as well, for although he has moved away — Noël currently lives in Berlin — his homeland does not let him go. At the same time, he describes his homeland as one that has abandoned him, as a “débordement de l’abondance en abandon,” an overflowing abundance of abandonment. Such contradictions continue to appear and fascinate throughout his poems, as does a sense of perpetual movement, often carried by slant rhymes. This creates the distinctive musicality of his texts, which becomes especially palpable through recurring refrains at the beginning of the collection, for example in “Je suis une fille de Port-au-Prince,” “J’ai effacé mon nom,” and “Ville qui déménage.” It is no surprise that Noël is also a musician and that many of his poems have already been set to music. In May, his album En toute pyromanie, an adaptation of his collection Le pyromane adolescent, will be released.

Reading Paons, one gets the impression that Noël could continue writing endlessly, despite — or perhaps precisely because of — the weight of his themes. At the same time, he is always able to uncover moments of wonder. In the title poem “Paons,” he writes: “in this failed city strewn with shell casings / where peacocks are burned alive / and schoolchildren eat chalk.” Like these wondrous creatures with their mesmerizing eyes, James Noël’s poems bear witness to what is happening in aland of the “Impasse beauté” — a dead end of beauty that never seems to cease.

This evening, James Noël will read poems from his new collection and will be interviewed by Cornelius Wüllenkemper about his writing.

The event will be interpreted French-German.
Kindly supported by ECHOO Konferenzdolmetschen