Bilingual edition translated by Peter Dale

The chronically invalid son of a robust sea-captain and novelist father, Tristan Corbière (1845-75) published one book of verse and was virtually unheard of in his lifetime. He is an informal formalist, delighting in clashing registers of diction and outrageous puns. With pervasive self-mocking humour, his poems combine a hopeless love, a grounded sea-fever, a ferocious ironic compassion and a savage sympathy with dogs and underdogs. As Peter Dale writes in his introduction: 'Above all, he is his own man, able to resist the blandishments of literary theory, social expectations, and the mollifications of religion.' The book contains the entire `Les Amours jaunes’ and a selection of Corbière’s uncollected poems.

Peter Dale worked as a secondary school teacher before becoming a freelance writer in 1993. He was co-editor of the poetry journal `Agenda’ for many years. Well known for his translations from Dante, Jules Laforgue and François Villon, Dale is also an accomplished poet in his own right: Anvil published his new and selected poems, `Edge to Edge’ in 1996 and his most recent collection, `Under the Breath’ in 2002.