Hold the Line: (An Essay on Poetry) between France and Singapore

Pierre Vinclair lived in Singapore from 2017 to 2019. He is a French poet, critic, translator and editor. He is the author of over 15 published books, most recently La Sauvagerie [ ‘wildness’; bilingual French / English ], 500 poems on the 6th extinction featuring 50 French and Singapore guests, and its theoretical counterpart, Agir non agir. Éléments pour une poésie de la résistance écologique [ ‘Act no act. Bullets for a poetry fighting against Climate Change’ ]. To date, he has translated into French Derek Walcott’s Morning, Paramin, the Chinese Shijing and Christine Chia’s two collections. He was awarded the Villa Kujoyama in Literature in 2010 and the Heredia Prize from Académie Française in 2014. As an editor, he runs S!NG ( which published the French translation of Sharon Olds’s Odes ) and is the Chief Editor of Catastrophes, a paper and online poetry magazine. He has a PhD in Philosophy of Literature.