Into the Turning – Emptyfull Poetry / Dans le tournant – Poésie du rienplein
Poems by Amy Hollowell and Sabine Huynh (in English and French).
Book written during a writing residency at the Factorie / Maison de Poésie in Normandy (France, April 2019), around the notions of Buddhism and Zen such as Amy Hollowell and Sabine Huynh have perceived and experienced them.
Christophe Chomant Publisher, La Factorie Poetry Series. September 2019.
Detailed description:
Amy Hollowell is an American who has taught Zen in Paris for many years. Sabine Huynh is a French-Vietnamese who was raised in a suburb of Lyon by Vietnamese parents who are both Buddhist and Catholic. They met in France in March 2018. Thanks to a writing residency at La Factorie/Poetry House in Normandy in 2019, they write a book of poetry together about their respective experiences of Zen Buddhism.
Amy Hollowell’s poems were written in American English and translated into French by Sabine Huynh. Sabine Huynh’s poems were written in French and translated into English by Amy Hollowell.
Our project in mind: to explore in poetry how each of us – an immigrant French woman of Vietnamese origin raised in a Buddhist family and an immigrant American Zen teacher in France raised in a non-Buddhist family – experiences what for simplicity’s sake we are calling Zen, a frequently misunderstood and therefore misused term, a term that by nature defies definition. We’re not looking to define it. We’re seeking to put in words (English and French) how we live(d) it. (Amy Hollowell and Sabine Huynh)