Cassandra at point-blank range

Winner of the Prix de Rome at Villa Médicis and the Théophile Gauthier Prize from the French Academy, Cassandra at point-blank range is the first full-length translation of revered French feminist poet Sandra Moussempès. Cassandra channels and weaves the voices of heroines including Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Mary Shelley, Cindy Sherman, Gaspara Stampa, Virginia Woolf, Unika Zürn, and Taeko Kono, as well as mythical figures like Lilith, Iphigenia, and Cassandra, to explore the depth of the Western feminine psyche. Through Moussempès' imagistic, layered poetics, readers encounter the corporality of being a woman among women and of making poetry with women, a process that this edition, translated by Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy, continues by "giving body" to Moussempès' work in English.

From the Translators' Note:

Raw and rigorous, Moussempès' approach to language, which rejects poetry as a precious world and sees it rather as an empowering universe, is ever more essential in today's world and in English. Through her words, women can coin themselves and their own reality. As allies in the endeavor, we have translated her text in minding this promise to women's voices.

Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy

Paris, February 2025