Storms Under the Skin

Poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was one of the most original and influential figures of twentieth century French poetry, hailed by Allen Ginsberg as 'master' and 'genius' and by Borges as 'without equal in the literature of our time'. In his vividly strange narratives Michaux creates a dream-like, mercurial world of wry invention unlike any other, idiosyncratic, resistant and philosophical. Often dramatic and incantatory in his poetics, he was also an extremely private perrson, shunning publicity, writing as he put it for all those 'suffering from their imaginations.'

Poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was one of the most original and influential figures of twentieth century French poetry. In Storms Under the Skin Jane Draycott translates poems and prose-poems from Michaux's works 1927-54.

Poet and artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was one of the most original and influential figures of twentieth century French poetry, hailed by Allen Ginsberg as a ‘master’ and ‘genius’, and by Borges as ‘without equal in the literature of our time’.

His vividly strange, philosophical, touching and incantatory narratives invite us into a mercurial world of wry invention unlike any other. An intensely private person who shunned publicity, Henri Michaux composed – as he put it – for all those ‘suffering from their imaginations.’

In Storms Under the Skin Jane Draycott translates poems and prose-poems from Michaux's volumes 1927-54, including extracts from his best-loved creations Plume and the haunting realm of Les Emanglons, alongside poems written on the eve of war in Europe and during the Occupation.

'Henri Michaux is... a conscience - the most sensitive substance yet discovered for registering the fluctuation anguish of day-to-day, minute-to-minute living' - John Ashbery, 1961.

Reviews of Jane Draycott's previous translations:

'The glamour ... dazzles as never before in modern English' - Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, review of 'Pearl', 2011.

'a near perfect marriage of emotion, content and form.' - Edith Hall, Stephen Spender Prize for Translation, 2010.