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The editor of The High Windowwould like to thank Patrick Williamson and his team of translators for all their hard work in putting together this supplement of poetry intranslation. [Ed.]

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INTRODUCTION

Curating this supplement was a great pleasure, and a special thanks to Tahar Bekri for guiding my selection. I am grateful to the contemporary poets, many of whom I know personally, for their kind contributions, and to my fellow translators for their exceptional work.

This supplement endeavours to present representative poetic voices in French-speaking countries of Africa and the Arab World. For it is an anomaly to separate North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa. The poetry included here is written in French, for evident historical reasons, but clearly only one dimension of an overall poetic landscape shared with other national languages: Arabic, Fula, Bambara, Berber, Wolof, etc.

Past generations are represented by Leopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal), a…