Tempest of stars

Film-maker, novelist, artist, playwright, entrepreneur, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) regarded himself above all as a poet. No matter how diverse or prolific his creativity, he saw poetry as central to his vision of all the arts. And it was as a poet that he began his career, publishing Le Cap de Bonne-Esperance in 1919, and it was in this vocation that he published Le Requiem in 1962, shortly before his death. While Cocteau s prose has found sympathetic translators, no substantial collection of his poetry exists in English. Drawing on poems from all stages of Cocteau s life, Jeremy Reed has rectified this deficiency by translating a generous selection of some of Cocteau s most durable poems."