Archive > David Hunter discusses Apollinaire at Europe House

March 18: David Hunter, author of the just-published Apollinaire in the Great War, looks as poet Stephen Romer discusses another POP author, Blaise Cendrars, at a well-attended gathering of the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation on the theme of Apollinaire and the French Poetry of the First World War at Europe House, in Westminster’s Smith Square. David, not renowned for his right-wing views, appreciated the irony of occupying a rostrum once dominated by the Thatcher cohorts during the building’s previous rôle as Conservative Party Central Office.

David Hunter, author of Apollinaire In The Great War 1914-18, gave a talk on Guillaume Apollinaire and French Poetry of the First World War at Europe House in London. The talk was organized in celebration of Francophone week by the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation in partnership with the Institut français (London) and the European Commission Representation in the UK.

An apprectiative audience gathered to hear David Hunter discuss the poets with Stephen Romer, a poet, translator and academic, and Dylan Read, a graduate of the Jacques Lecoq international theatre school in Paris. Several poems were recited, including selections from Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, Marcel Sauvage, Henriette Sauret, Pierre-Jean Jouve, Henriette Charasson and finally Blaise Cendrars, an author and poet published by Peter Owen in translation who influenced – and was in turn influenced by – Apollinaire.

Books by Cendrars still available from Peter Owen include Dan Yack, Gold, The Astonished Man and To The End of The World.

Blaise Cendrars in 1916