Poetry as Hospitality? An Interview with Claude Mouchard and Mary Shaw

Abstract

The poet Claude Mouchard (1941–) brings together seemingly disparate issues of translation, the current-day migrant crisis, and collaborative verse within the unexpected image of poetry as hospitality: a concept that interrogates the reciprocal obligations of host and guest, native and foreigner, author and subject. Mouchard's work was made available in 2017 through the bilingual publication of Entangled—Papers!—Notes, translated by his fellow poet, Mary Shaw. In this interview, both Shaw and Mouchard reflect on how poetry partakes of the complex exchanges, rituals, and responsibilities that hospitality occasions in today's fraught, globalized society.