Poetry

Wild Coal

The Book

1963

Poetry
22,8 x 16,5 cm
64 pages
Paperback
Club des étudiants d’anglais (de la Sorbonne), Paris.

It was in 1963 that Wild Coal, Kenneth White’s first book, was published, a booklet of poetry in English published in Paris. The poet, then 27 years old, is a lecturer of English at the Sorbonne and he had not yet “cast off” with his native Scotland (he will not do so until 1967). The Club des étudiants d’anglais first published him in the pages of their internal journal, Soap Box. His articles are well perceived. The idea then emerged to publish his first collection. The copy of the first edition dedicated by the author to André Crépin, assistant in the English department of the Sorbonne at the time, indicates that the latter would be at the initiative of the publication: “To André Crépin, who first put the idea of publishing these poems into our heads, with my sincere friendship”. As it is a work decorated with photographs, it can be considered a precursor to the many artist’s books published by the author.

Description
Kenneth White, Marie-Claude White (photographer),
Introduction in English by Francis Scarfe. Foreword in French by Jean-Jacques Mayoux. Wild Coal. Club des Étudiants d’Anglais, 5, rue de l’école de médecine, Paris 6th, undated (1963). In-8 paperback, 24 x 14.8 cm, 48 pp. Red and black typography of the cover. A drawing of a gull with wings spread on the cover and reproduced on the last page of the book. Two black & white photographs out of text by Marie-Claude White.

Stéphane Bigeard, The Storm Petrel, Issue n. 2. [extract from pp. 12-16]