Kaddour, Hédi 1945–

PERSONAL: Born 1945, in Tunisia.

ADDRESSES: Home—Paris, France. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Éditions Gallimard, 5, rue Sébastien-Bottin, 75328 Paris, France.

CAREER: École Normale Supérieure, Lyon, France, teacher in comparative and French literature, drama, and creative writing.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Le chardon mauve, Ipomée (Moulins, France), 1987.

La fin des vendanges, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1989.

La chaise vide, Obsidiane (Sens, France), 1992.

Jamais une ombre simple, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1994.

Les fileuses, Temps qu'il Fait (Cognac, France), 1995.

Passage au Luxembourg, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2000.

Contributor of poems to anthology Twentieth-Century French Poems; also contributor of poems (translated by Marilyn Hacker) to periodicals, including Antioch Review, Poetry London, Poetry, Ploughshares, New Yorker, Kenyon Review, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, and Verse. Author of theater column, La Nouvelle revue française.

OTHER

(Translator, with Nancy Blake) Wallace Stevens, Poèmes, Delta (Montpellier, France), 1988.

Ionesco: Textes étudiés: La cantatrice chauve; La leçon, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1994.

L'émotion impossible: lectures de poésie, Temps qu'il Fait (Cognac, France), 1994.

Pour les adjectifs, vous viendrez me voir, Editions of the Center for the Formation and Improvement of Journalists (Paris, France), 1995.

(Translator) Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Minna von Barnhelm, J. Corti (Paris, France), 1997.

Aborder la poésie (literary history and criticism), Seuil (Paris, France), 1997.

(With Michel Deguy and Robert Davreu) Des poètes français contemporains, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paris, France), 2001.

Waltenberg (novel), Gallimard (Paris, France), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Tunisian-born poet and author Hédi Kaddour draws on the rich imagery of his homeland for inspiration, using Maghrebian images and phrases for his verses in French. Of one of his early poetry collections, La fin des vendanges, World Literature Today critic Hédi Abdel-Jaouad wrote that the verses offer "quite a harvest, a bounty of simple yet exotic words, familiar yet audacious images, and sounds that reverberate and hark back … to a truer, more exquisite past." The reviewer went on to note that Kaddour renders North African folklore into more universal motifs, turning particular images into archetypes. Abdel-Jaouad continued, "One can only hope that Kaddour's masterful work is but a harbinger of more plentiful harvests to come."

Jamais une ombre simple also earned the approval of Abdel-Jaouad, who commented in another World Literature Today article that it is "a wonderful collection full of fresh images, linguistic bezels, and sinewy delights." The reviewer further observed that Kaddour's poems reflect the ephemeral and transitory nature of life, but often add a dose of humor and moments of pleasure. "From the unique distillation of what he has experienced and felt more deeply there arises in Kaddour's poetry a sense of loss that somehow the poet magically transforms into a sense of delight."

In the more-recent collection Passage au Luxembourg, the poet includes verses that make observations of normal, everyday life in what World Literature Today contributor Michael Bishop described as "a volume of great charm and nuance" about a world of "teeming otherness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

World Literature Today, summer, 1990, Hédi Abdel-Jaouad, review of La fin des vendanges, pp. 519-520; winter, 1996, Hédi Abdel-Jaouad, review of Jamais une ombre simple, pp. 161-162; winter, 2002, Michael Bishop, review of Passage au Luxembourg, p. 182.