Antonin Artaud and Jacques Prevel: Raw Creative Report in 1946–47 Paris
Romina Achatz in conversation with Stephen Barber

In this edition of FemPoem, Romina Achatz speaks with writer and researcher Stephen Barber about Antonin Artaud and the young, largely unknown French poet Jacques Prevel, whose notebooks provide a unique account of Artaud’s final years in Paris after his release from the psychiatric hospital in Rodez in 1946.

The programme begins with an introduction to Artaud, his radical ideas about theatre, language and the body, and his influence on the international avant-garde. It then turns to the Japanese avant-garde, particularly Tatsumi Hijikata and the development of Ankoku Butoh. The broadcast discusses the transmission of Artaud’s voice to Japan through Uno Kuniichi, who received recordings of Artaud from Gilles Deleuze in Paris, including material from To Have Done with the Judgment of God.

Stephen Barber then reads the introduction to his forthcoming English translation of Jacques Prevel’s notebooks, published by Infinity Land Press in London on 15 November and translated directly from the original French notebooks. The edition also includes photographs by Karolina Urbaniak of the Paris locations associated with the encounters between Artaud and Prevel.

The programme concludes with three translated extracts from Prevel’s notebooks, offering an intimate glimpse into the intense relationship between the two poets: their meetings, conversations, movements through post-war Paris, and the increasingly complex forms of friendship, dependency and artistic exchange that developed between them.

Antonin Artaud and Jacques Prevel: Raw Creative Report in 1946–47 Paris is a journey from Artaud’s voice and its international influence into the private world of the notebooks that recorded his final years.

Further info about the publisher and purchase: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/