Cold Water Shielded

<p><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>French-English dual language edition</em></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Salah Stétié (1929-2020) was a French Lebanese poet and essayist of international renown. In his exquisite soberly beautiful poems Western culture merges with Oriental and Arabic traditions. His writing has a swirling metaphysical dimension while never ceasing to root itself in earthy sensuous experience. His poems evoke a deep half-questioning half-serene meditation of all that is 'hanging on the other side of being' - 'the great soft lion's track in the invisible' - while still capturing the swarming particularities of our daily presence in the world.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Salah Stétié was the first poet of Arabic origin to publish in French. In the process of writing a new language was created 'Françarabe' in which many etymological roots are taken from the Arabic but where the words are nevertheless from the French.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Salah Stétié was born in Beirut. After studies in Lebanon and France he turned his attention towards the problems of contemporary poetry establishing exchanges and friendships with writers such as Jouve Mandiargues Ungaretti Bonnefoy Du Bouchet and David Gascoyne. After launching the cultural weekly </span><em style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>L'Orient littéraire</em><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> in Beirut he developed two parallel careers as a writer and as a distinguished diplomat in Paris Morocco The Hague and elsewhere. He was awarded Le Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 1995 for his life's work. This included over fifty books translated into 15 languages.</span></p><p></p>