Background

Claire Malroux was born on September 3, 1925, in Albi, France. She is the daughter of Augustin and Paule Malroux.

Education

Claire Malroux was educated at the École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles in Paris.

Career

Claire Malroux, after studies in Paris, remained in the capital, where she still lives, for most of her adult life, except for a post-war sojourn in England which led to her engagement with English language and its poetry (her concentration until then having been in classical languages and in the French canon). Though she had for years previously worked as a literary translator and was already the author of two collections of poems, Malroux describes as a signal event in her own literary life her discovery in 1983 of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Malroux's ongoing project of translating Dickinson began then, and her own work evolved and developed along with it. She is also acclaimed for her translations of poetry and prose including the writings of Derek Walcott, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Bronte, Edith Wharton, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Malroux is the author of collections of poetry in French. Her works in French were published under the name Claire-Sara Roux. The most popular is Edge, translated by Marilyn Hacker and published in 1996. Many poems in Edge address the themes of aging and the inevitable progression of time, as it explores the porous boundaries between different realms: life and death, the natural and the human, and the actual and the spiritual. In A Long Gone Sun: A Poem, the English version of which was published in 2000, Malroux tells of her childhood in France during World War II and her father's involvement in the French Resistance, which ultimately led to his death in a Nazi concentration camp. Traces, Sillons (2009) takes the form of a journal of the poet's process, as she reflects on books read or remembered, on translating some of those books, and on the emergence of new poems, also given, sometimes in multiple versions, in the text.

Chambre avec Vue sur L'éternité: Emily Dickinson (2005) traces the encounter of two poets - Emily Dickinson and Claire Malroux. Her recent book, Daybreak: New and Selected Poems (2020), is a bilingual collection translated from French and with an introduction by Marilyn Hacker.

Malroux is also known as a contributor of poetry to the Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, International Quarterly, Luna, New England Review, Field, Boulevard, TriQuarterly, and New Yorker.

Achievements

• Claire Malroux is considered to be one of the leading women poets and translators of France. A great number of her awards were received for her translation of English poets' works, including the Prix Maurice-Edgar Coindreau (1990) for translation of Poemes by Emily Dickinson and the Grand Prix National for translation from the Legion of Honour (1995). Malroux was also listed as a noteworthy poet and translator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Daybreak: New and Selected Poems

    (The selection Daybreak: New and Selected Poems by Marilyn...)

    2020
  • Edge

    (Edge offers a selection of poems from Claire Malroux's pr...)

    1996
  • A Long-Gone Sun

    (In A Long-Gone Sun, the author recounts her childhood and...)

    1998

Connections

Claire Malroux is married. The marriage produced two children.

Father:

Augustin Malroux

Mother:

Paule Malroux