Biography of Michael Edwards, poet, literary critic, translator, and professor
Michael Edwards, born in 1938 in Barnes, near London, is a Franco-British poet, literary critic, translator, and professor. After studying at Cambridge, he lived from 1961 to 1963 at the Collège franco-britannique of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, where he deepened his passion for French literature, notably through a thesis on Racine. He teaches comparative literature at the University of Warwick and was appointed Professor at the Collège de France in 2002, holding the Chair of Literary Creation in the English Language. His courses, broadcast by France Culture, cover English and French literature, painting, music, and philosophy. Naturalized French, he was elected to the French Academy in 2013, becoming the first Briton to hold a seat there. His work explores the connections between poetry, spirituality, and language, fostering cultural rapprochement between France and the United Kingdom.
I will be the dream of the shadow, a nothingness at the heart of the tree.
A poem-chair
“I adopted the chair, this familiar object, a few decades ago, at a time when I wanted to create art on a human scale in public spaces, while everywhere else people opted for the monumental: it is an object shaped like the body and serves the body. It is difficult to feel exclusive ownership of an object so universally shareable. It is mine when I occupy it, but if I leave it, someone else can claim it as their chair.” Michel Goulet, artist-sculptor
The project Prendre position
Prendre position is a sculpture-installation project of 47 chair-poems to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. They were installed in a flowered meadow created especially for the occasion by the campus estate service.
This artistic installation was conceived by the Quebecois artist-sculptor Michel Goulet, in collaboration with François Massut, founding director of the collective Poésie is not dead.
Each house on the campus is represented by a chair, thanks to a donation from the Maison des étudiants canadiens and the support of the Labrenne group. Each of the 47 chairs is a unique work.
History and architecture of the house
The Collège franco-britannique was created by Pierre Martin and Maurice Vieu, two architects who also designed the Maison des étudiants de l’Asie du Sud-Est. Its architectural style is rooted in the British tradition.
