In Avery Burns’ Murmurations Reading Series, the French poet Franck André Jamme, with translator Norma Cole, will read from his new book, To The Secret (La Presse, 2015).  In addition, poet John Sakkis celebrates his excellent new book, The Islands (Night Boat, 2014).

Franck André Jamme has published fifteen books of poems and fragments since 1981, as well as numerous illustrated books (with Jaume Plensa, James Brown, Zao Wou Ki, Marc Couturier, Suzan Frecon, Yang Jie Chang, Olivier Debre, Acharya Vyakul, Philippe Favier).

He has been praised by Edmond Jabes, Henri Michaux and René Char (whose Complete Works he has edited in La Pléiade), and has been translated by John Ashbery.

He has published numerous works in the United States, including Moon Wood (Selavy Press, 2000); Extracts from the Life of a Beetle (Black Square, 2000); The Recitation of Forgetting (Black Square, 2003); Another Silent Attack Black Square/Brooklyn Rail, 2006); New Exercises (Wave Books, 2008). He is one of the authors of The Yale Book of French Poetry, 2004. For his life work, he received in 2005 the Grand Prix de Poesie de la Societe des Gens de Lettres.

Jamme is also a specialist and curator of contemporary Indian Tantric, Brut and tribal arts (for Magiciens de la terre at Centre Pompidou, Fondation Cartier and Galerie du Jour/Agnes b., Paris, the CCA and Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, Feature Gallery, The Drawing Center and Lawrence Markey Gallery, NYC).

He lives in Paris and Burgundy.

John Sakkis is the author of The Islands (2015) and Rude Girl (2009), as well as numerous chapbooks and ephemera. Since 2005 he has edited BOTH BOTH, a magazine of poetry and art.

With Angelos Sakkis he has translated four books by Athenian poet Demosthenes Agrafiotis: most recently Y’es and Diaeresis (2015); Maribor (2011), which was awarded the 2011 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation, and Chinese Notebook.

John lives in Oakland.

He was recently interviewed  in the SF Weekly:
http://www.sfweekly.com/exhibitionist/2015/02/11/the-write-stuff-john-sakkis-on-covering-everything-in-rat-bonesJohn is currently  blogging for The Poetry Foundation/ Harriet for National Poetry Month:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/04/now/