Poetry · A way to begin
Paille en queue
Not translated into English
Antoine Abel · 1969
Synopsis
The author's first collection, a booklet of some forty poems published at his own expense while he was a schoolteacher, in French and English. In it he recounts his childhood and youth memories in Mahé and brings the nature of the archipelago into poetry: the flying foxes, the corals, the octopuses, the turtles, the cicadas and the south-east monsoon. The paille-en-queue of the title is a seabird of the Indian Ocean.
Context
According to the Africultures article on the author, the press took root late in the archipelago and fiction published locally did not appear there until the sixties. The collection made Abel a precursor; he then published short stories in English in the local reviews, then narratives and tales in France with P. J. Oswald, and received the Prix des Mascareignes. His French and Creole poems were included in three anthologies in the early eighties.
Who it is for
Simple poems about everyday life and the nature of the islands; the original chapbook is rare.
Prizes and reception
It led to its author being regarded as a precursor, before his books were published in France.
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