My Little Lioness

My little lioness
I didn't like it when you scratched me
and I threw you to the Christians
Yet I loved you very much
Please forgive me
my little lioness.

Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) has been the most widely read poet in France for years, but he is hardly known in the English speaking world, except perhaps as the screen writer of 'Les Enfants du Paradis'. Anarchic, whimisical, erotic, politically committed, and child-like by turns, the poems in Selected Poems span Jacques Prévert's published works from Paroles in 1949 to the posthumous La Cinquième Saison. The introduction to this important new translation places his life in the context of his times and the translator's notes explain some of the references and word play in the original.

Translated by Sarah Lawson.

Sarah Lawson is a poet and translator. Born in Indianapolis in 1943, she has spent most of her adult life in London. She first encountered Jacques Prévert’s poetry while an undergraduate at Indiana University. She has translated Christine de Pisan’s Treasure of the City of Ladies from medieval French and the play The Girls’ Consent from the Spanish of Leandro Fernández de Moratín. Her own poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and in her collection Below the Surface. She has published two poetry pamphlets with Hearing Eye: Down Where the Willow Is Washing Her Hair and Twelve Scenes of Malta.