Jean Portante

Jean Portante (born 19 December 1950 in Differdange) is a Luxembourgish writer who resides in Paris.

He has written novels, stories, plays, journalistic articles and poetry, and has been widely translated.

The jury commented: "Since the beginning of the 1980s, Jean Portante has explored topics related to identity, from memory to forgetfulness, in various literary genres, especially poetry, the novel, drama and the essay. His literary style continues to evolve, marked by strong intertextuality, providing access to new interpretations and inciting pluralized reading."

Mention was also made of Portante's efforts to "promote Luxembourg literature both at home and abroad".

Translations (selection)

La dernière traversée de la Manche, de Pierre Joris.

Poèmes.

In 1983, when he wrote his first book of poems, Fire and mud, he moved to Paris.

He translated works by Juan Gelman and Gonzalo Rojas into French.

Currently, he heads the Luxembourg collection Graphiti (poetry) editions.

In France, he is a member of the Académie Mallarmé and the Prix Guillaume Apollinaire.

Editions PHI, Luxembourg 1995 – Hiver clinique, de Ioana Craciunescu.

Poèmes.

Editions PHI, Luxembourg 1996 – L’épiphanie de l’alphabet, de Maria Luisa Spaziani, Editions PHI.

His novels include Mrs Haroy ou la mémoire de la baleine (Editions Phi, 1997) among others, which has been translated into many languages, and he is also the author of the biography Allen Ginsberg: L'autre Amérique (Le Castor Astral, 1999).

Poèmes Luxembourg 1997 – La cathédrale en flammes, de Guy Rewenig.

Roman.

Editions du Castor Astral.

Paris 1997 – Obscur ouvert, de Juan Gelman.

Editions PHI.

Poèmes.

Luxembourg 1997 – Christ avec renard urbain, de John F. Deane, Editions PHI.

Portante’s collection of poems L’Etrange langue (Editions Le Taillis Pré, 2002) won the Mallarmé award in France in 2003, and the same year he was given the Grand Prix d’Automne de la Société des Gens de Lettres for his entire life’s work in poetry.

Numerous books have been translated including in English Point/Erasing, translated by Anne Marie Glasheen (Daedalus, 2003) and In Reality, translated by Zoë Skoulding (Seren Press, 2013).

He is a translator of poetry into French from Spanish, Italian, English and German.

Portante called it a "strange language" (the title of one of his collections which was awarded the French Prix Mallarmé in 2003).

Jean Portante started to write when he was 33 years.

Before, he studied in Nancy, France.

In 2003 he received the Grand Award of the Society, for all his work, and the Prix Mallarmé.

In 2005, Le Castor Astral published a selected poems, La Cendre des mots, covering his work from 1989 to 2005.

Since 2006 he has been a member of the Académie Mallarmé.

In 2008 he co-founded the French poetry magazine Inuits dans la jungle with the poet Jacques Darras, while in Luxembourg he heads the literary magazine Transkrit.

His latest books are En réalité (Editions Phi 2008); La réinvention de l'oubli (Editions le Castor Astral, 2010), Conceptions (Editions Phi, 2012) and Après le tremblement (Editions Le Castor Astral, 2013).

As he describes in his novel Mrs Haroy ou la mémoire de la baleine, from an early age he felt like a world citizen.

However, for Jean Portante, French is a language outside the dyad Italy–Luxembourg, a language learned, tamed, but which always remains to be conquered.

In France, he co-founded, with Jacques Darras and Jean-Yves Reuzeau, the journal Inuits dans la jungle, the first issue being published in June 2008.

In Luxembourg, he founded in 2009 the literary magazine Transkrit, dedicated to translating contemporary literature, and Phi.

Previously, his novel Mrs. Haroy or the memory of the whale to be filmed in 2010 earned him Luxembourg's Servais Prize (best book of the year in any genre).

In 2011 he was awarded Luxembourg’s Batty Weber National Prize, which is given every three years for a life’s work.

In March 2011, he was awarded the Batty Weber Prize for his work as a whole.