La Presse

Emma Ramadanhas a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University and a Masters in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris. Her translation of Anne Garréta’s novel Sphinx was published by Deep Vellum and her poetry has appeared in a number of journals. She recently spent a year in Marrakech translating works by the Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani and working with Dar al-Ma’mûn library.  

Anne Parian was born in Marseille in 1964 and currently lives in Paris. She is the author of seven books of poetry and hybrid works; she is also a photographer and video artist.

Knowing nothing about flora the large and small vegetation is represented by color or contour
Leave the arrangements of a few shared places to their number
One unhappy hour the garden breaks away from the image of such irrefutable diligence naming new patterns at its discretion
A display in the smallest possible space of the smallest common denominator of an undefined but stable state corrected by sentiments of possible praise or a realized impulse

​Monospace  is, first and finally, the dream of a garden. There are so many gardens—there is, of course, the story of a perfect one—and perfectly lost. So these pages gather perfumes, trees, benches, buildings, colors, and perspectives all together. They arrange a terrain, a territory, a trench, a tableau. But how, among inevitable ruins, can we create a space that can only take form as it is being described? Monospace repeats the question: “How can we garden space into existence?”

“I want to leave even the garden
because its description is enough.”