Haydée Touitou
Interview by Jennie Edgar
Photo by Dimanche Creative
January 1st, 2023
[Reading] creates the bubble, the matrix, the scheme into which life can happen and [we] can exist.
Haydée is a poet and translator. She spoke with us about writing poetry, logging books read, Joyce’s Ulysses, and reading next to dear ones. She lives in Paris.
“It is on the one hand a mundane experience of the structure behind the mundane, patches of unprimed canvas peeking through the real. And-why not speak of it- fucking or getting fucked up was part of it, is, the way sex and substance can liquefy the particulars of perception into an experiment of form. The way a person’s stutter can be liquefied by song.”
The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner
Tell us about yourself!
My name is Haydée, I am a poet and translator living in Paris, France.
In March 2020, We Have Been Meaning To, a book of poetry with photographs by Marie Déhé was published by Art Paper Editions. We followed a year later with a poster published by September Books titled « Self-Help ». We just premiered a video version of that work at Libreria Delle Donne in Milan, Italy and more dates and locations will follow. I particularly enjoy that poetry allows for easy connections with other practises.
In the last couple of years, I was accepted in a series of writing residencies where I started experimenting with what I like to call still life poems, resulting in two books, In Constant Hilarity published last year with Thoughts Of Me Press and Still Life Poems which will also be published in a French as a bilingual book with L.A. based publisher Pois.é in May 2023!
What does your creative practice look like?
We often joke with my friends that sleeping is part of my writing practice just because I’ve been doing a lot of research on narcolepsy for an upcoming book. And also because I adore sleeping. It is unfortunately just a joke. My creative practice mainly consists in looking for free time outside of my translation jobs to simply be with my notebook and write. That’s why I go as much as I can to residencies abroad, the deadlines and commercial work emergencies are less of an obstacle when I’m not home.
I was just in Finland for a month and a half recently and I feel like I was able to create as much as I probably did in a year spent only working in Paris. There is something about this special time you are granted just for your practice, you are taken care of, even offered funding sometimes and you finally feel you can focus on your practice as a priority. These precious periods of time also allow me to discover literature and worlds I wouldn’t have otherwise. I read a lot of Finnish poetry while I was there, I read everything I could find in translation actually. One book stayed quite strongly with me: poems/runoja by Anselm Hollo. He translated some of his own poetry!
What books have been important to your creative becoming?
An essay by Etel Adnan: “To Write in a Foreign Language” first published in the collective book Unheard Words, then translated in French and published as a single beautiful little book. It was quite precious, with a traditional binding where you still had to cut open the pages with a knife. When I was younger, people still had paper cutters in their homes because most books were bound this way. I feel it is less and less the case and we tend to use regular kitchen knives now.
Going back to Adnan’s essay, it is about exile, languages and writing. It tells a lot about what it feels to have parents from two different places and to be living in a third or eventually forth place (languages eventually adding up). Reading this in 2020 has brought me a lot of relief, a lot of understanding of my own relationship to language, why I love so much to learn them, why I am a translator and why ultimately writing in French took me a little while.
How did the cultural resources of your childhood influence you today?
The official national curriculum has a big emphasis on literature in France. As a result, I read Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, and even Proust before I was 15. This vision of education strongly influenced my reading habits of today. Not only did it inform me reading was a simple part of life, it also gave me the tools to do research on further readings, make connections between authors, and ultimately know how important it is to read beyond what that curriculum offered us at the time. That’s undeniably the biggest service this way of teaching has given me, knowing that there are so many other masterpieces worthy of being classics that we’re just not taught yet. We’ll have to teach ourselves.
What is the first book you remember falling in love with?
The books that made me fall in love with the act of reading are undeniably Agatha Christie’s thrillers. I remember one summer in Tunisia when I was 9 or so, we had to keep on going to the bookstore because I was just devouring them one after the other. I have a picture from that summer, looking so happy in the shade reading for what I remember being hours on end.
Then the first book that felt like being sucker punched in the stomach -in the best way possible- was The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig. I must have been something like 15 or 16 then and it was the first time I actually fully appreciated a book quote unquote for grown-ups. Zweig’s autobiography was probably the first book from school I read deeply, with all my heart and soul. I remember being in my room as I read the last paragraph, completely shaken up to my core, ready to bawl my eyes out
And what books have been especially meaningful to you?
In 2007, I started writing down my name, the month and the year I was starting to read every book. Recently, I also added the location so most books I own have an inscription on its first page such as « Haydée Touitou. Avril 2022. Stockholm » (I just picked out at random the book closest to my hand to read this inscription, it is Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield Ph.D. a book I found in a used book store in Stockholm, particularly fitted as I am currently researching narcolepsy and other sleep related things).
Because of this system, I am more able to remember what I was doing at a given time and where I was too. I can only rely on my short term memory in everyday life but I always remember how I felt while reading this or that book. So in a way, the books that have been especially meaningful to me are those enabling me to remember certain times in my life.
Marguerite Duras feels like teenage. I remember understanding what it meant to be born as a girl, on my way to becoming a woman, while I was reading her books. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oats had quite a similar effect. I recall thinking something along the lines of that’s why the world feels the way it feels to me. Crime and Punishment reminds me of my first love. Richard Brautigan and William Carlos Williams were precious lockdown companions. Reading or re-reading most of both their poetry collections brought great appeasement, maybe something about a hidden lightness. Siri Hustvedt helped me realize who I was as a person. When I read What I Loved, I gathered a few things about how I personally love, may it be friends, family or the person I love. I spent last summer reading In Search of Lost Time in its entirety. Some sort of challenge reading all of Proust which gave me great adjacency. I’ll always remember where I was when I finished Watch Us Dance by Leïla Slimani. I am so glad her work is being translated into English, and I highly recommend the first Volume of the ongoing trilogy In the Country of Others.
“I believe reading is the strongest form of narcotics. You’re basically staring at black symbols on white paper for hours and this simple action takes places you couldn’t even dream of.”
What are you working on now?
My main focus these days is to embrace the possibility of writing in French. Since the beginning of my practice, I’ve been working in English as a tool of freedom, empowerment even, from the weight of what literature in French represents. Last year, I started translating my manuscript Still Life Poems into Poèmes Nature Morte, and I am so thrilled the French version will be published alongside the English thanks to my publisher Kate at Pois.é who was open to the idea! A symbol I hold dear to my heart. I am now in the process of translating my existing body of work and recently I even started writing in French first handedly, an incredible feeling it was to finally dare to write in what is ultimately my first language.
What’s a fond memory you have with a book?
Last winter, between a little kitchen accident and a covid isolation, I was kinda stuck at home for the entire month of December and some very dear friends Kenza, Karim and Tewfik dropped a care package including the first two books of Douglas Adams’ saga: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It quite literally made my life a lot, lot, lot, better.
A few months later in Helsinki, I found the third book in a wonderful used books shop called Arkadia: Life, the universe and everything. Quite by chance, quite a coincidence. The first two books have left such a warm feeling in my heart because it was such a thoughtful gift read in quite extreme loneliness, and the third one I read on the night ferry I took from Helsinki to Stockholm. One of the most beautiful journeys I ever embarked upon. Douglas Adams is just as sharply smart as he is desperately funny, a true beautiful travel companion. I remember vividly the pages about the art of flying, with steps to follow, and techniques to learn such as « DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY ».
How has reading changed the way you live?
I feel I almost build the way I live around the act of reading. It is the first thing I do in the morning, and the last thing I do at night. When I’m especially lucky I even have time for it during the day. It is something I enjoy doing on my own, but there is also nothing quite like reading next to dear ones, may they be reading too, or sleeping, or cooking, or doing something else entirely. These moments, that happen more often on vacations or weekends or simply outside of work, are quite simply what I live for.
Do you have any romantic associations with books?
All my associations with books are romantic. I love receiving books as gifts, especially when it’s a book that is important to the person giving it to me. It’s often how I discovered writers I might not have read otherwise. For instance, my friend Emma made me discover Roberto Bolaño. As Spanish is not one of the languages I speak, my knowledge of literature written in Spanish was always somehow limited. Reading his novel The Savage Detectives made me want to change that drastically. I’ll be forever grateful for such discoveries, all the books friends recommend. I also love books that were chosen for me just because the title meant something between me and the person who gifted it for instance. That’s how I discovered an incredible Macedonian poet called Vladimir Martinovski and his collection Real Water.
Did anyone ever gift you a book that felt particularly special?
More recently, my best friend Hugo bought for me Migrations by Gloria Gervitz without really knowing who she was or what her work was about. But flipping through it, he had the feeling it was something for me. And he was right, discovering the way she wrote, nourishing the Migrations Poem year after year from 1976 to 2020, will quite surely influence the way I write in the longer term.
What are you looking for when you’re in search of a “good book?
I never look for books, I feel I already have so much I haven’t read yet, it’s piles and piles of books to read. I am quite convinced my lifetime won’t be enough to go through everything I already wish to read today.
How do you fit reading into your busy schedule?
I make sure it’s the first and last thing I do everyday. It creates the bubble, the matrix, the scheme into which life can happen and I can exist.
What book would you like to re-read?
I often reread books. Not as much as I rewatch movies though. This I do way too much. Still, I often reread books, especially with poetry. Picking up a collection of poems for the third or fourth time happens very often. It even goes further, I sometimes enjoy reading something for the first time just because I look forward to the second or third read. Recently I had that feeling with James Joyce’s Ulysses, maybe because it is simply poetry in my mind. As I was reading it, I could only think of how I was looking forward to the second read. This is actually happening right now with a theory book titled Technic and Magic, The Reconstruction of Reality by Federico Campagna. I feel I might need to read some of the authors he references before reading for a second time and hopefully make more sense of it.
Is there a particular author that’s piquing your interest right now?
A writer friend I deeply admire is Yelena Moskovich. She is currently working on her third novel, but I would advise anyone to read her firsts: The Natashas and Virtuoso.
Why is reading worthwhile to you?
I believe reading is the strongest form of narcotics. You’re basically staring at black symbols on white paper for hours and this simple action takes places you couldn’t even dream of.
I have always dog-eared the books I was reading, every page that made me laugh cry think smile frown drown.
