Emerald Wounds

Joyce Mansour was a poet who worked within the Surrealist movement in 1950s Paris. Born into a Syrian Jewish family, she had left Egypt, and she was only twenty-five when her first book appeared in Paris in 1953. Her darkly macabre and sensual verse caught the attention of André Breton, who welcomed her into his circle, and the two stayed close friends and allies for the rest of his life.

Despite her standing among the Surrealists, the wider literary establishment paid her books little notice. That is hardly surprising, since she wrote openly about death and about women's uninhibited desire. Decades later, her work has finally found its moment.

This collection gathers the most important poems from across her career, moving from the spare, gothic fragments of her debut to the coiling intensity of her poems from the 1980s. The poems appear in fresh translations that keep her voice unfiltered and raw, conveying the irritation, rage, and grief of a clever, cosmopolitan woman who pushes against the limits imposed on her by a society run by men.