ISBN: 9780872869011

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: City Light Books, 2023
Language: Bilingual (French/English)

Rediscover Joyce Mansour, the most significant Surrealist poet to emerge from 1950s Paris.

“You know very well, Joyce, that you are for me–and very objectively too–the greatest poet of our time. Surrealist poetry, that’s you.”–André Breton

Joyce Mansour, a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt, was 25 years old when she published her first book in Paris in 1953. Her fierce, macabre, erotically charged works caught the eye of André Breton, who welcomed her into his Surrealist group and became her lifelong friend and ally. Despite her success in surrealist circles, her books received scant attention from the literary establishment, which is hardly surprising since Mansour’s favorite topics happened to be two of society’s greatest fears: death and unfettered female desire.

Now, over half a century later, Mansour’s time has come. Emerald Wounds collects her most important work, spanning the entire arc of her career, from the gothic, minimalist fragments of her first published work to the serpentine power of her poems of the 1980s. In fresh new translations, Mansour’s voice surges forth uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society. Mansour is a poet the world needs today.

Joyce Mansour was born in England in 1928 to a Jewish family of Syrian descent who moved to Egypt when she was still an infant. She grew up among the English-speaking elite of Egypt. Despite her privileged childhood, she was deeply scarred by the loss of her mother to cancer at 15 years old and the death of her first husband six months into their marriage, when she was just 18. She learned to speak and write in French when she married her second husband, a Francophone Egyptian, and was exiled to Paris when Nasser came to power. Mansour was part of the inner circle of Surrealists, a close friend of André Breton and the most significant poet to join the group after World War II. She wrote 16 books of poetry, as well as prose works and plays. She lived in Paris, France until her death in 1986 at age of 58.