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 deficicncy by translating a generous selection of some of Cocteau’s most durable poems.
