A Few Microseconds on Earth

Translated by Pauline Levy Valensi. In this English debut, French poet Perrin Langda offers poems with equal parts surrealism and satire. Sex, global warming, video games, gentrification, and all the symptoms of late-stage capitalism are illuminated in Langda's microcosmic poems, composed in ecstatic flashes. Pauline Levy Valensi's skillful translation captures the irony and rhythm of these inventive lyrics, wherein "man emerges from mud / like a zombie and grills / the blood of the planet / which goes up in smoke."

"An unusual, off-the-wall, merry, lively, eruptive, troubled but clear-sighted poetry, continuously in motion, geomorphic."--François-Xavier Farine

"Langda's poems zoom in and out on temporal, digital, and emotional scales, flashing through exponentially infinite and infinitesimal temporalities. Yet Perrin's universe is in decay, his earth as blue as the rotting lemon in Joseph Beuys' 'Capri Batterie.' Pauline Levy Valensi voices these intricate miniatures in the elemental rhythms of punk rock."--Esther Allen

Poetry.

Perrin Langda lives in Grenoble, France. His poems offer brief, often ironic pictures of everyday life. He is the author of six collections of poetry--most recently, A FEW MICROSECONDS ON EARTH (World Poetry Books, 2019)--and has been featured in numerous French magazines.

Pauline Levy Valensi's translations have been published in New Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today, and other publications, and have been awarded a Pushcart Nomination and citations from the 2018 and 2019 Käpylä Prize. She is the translator of Perrin Langda's poetry book A FEW MICROSECONDS ON EARTH (World Poetry Books, 2019).