Only the Poem Can Speak and Write the Limitless Journey of Errancy: Reading Edouard Maunick’s Poetry
Volume 1, Issue 2, Article Number: 252004 (2025)
Home >> Yatharth >> Volume 1, Issue 2
Danielle Tranquille1,*
1Department of Languages, West Melbourne, Vic 3003, Australia
*Corresponding Author: danielle.tranquille@haileybury.com.au
Received: 19 August 2025 | Revised: 30 August 2025
Accepted: 18 September 2025 | Published Online: 24 September 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17178730
© 2025 The Authors, under a Creative Commons license, Published by Scholarly Publication
Abstract
Over more than fifty years, a poetic dialogue unfolds as Maunick travels seas and lands of the Mascarene Islands and the Caribbean, crossing from Africa to Europe, from the northern to the southern Americas, journeys driven either by an irrepressible need to wander or by professional necessity. These journeys are moments of encounter, be it, with Césaire and Senghor in Paris, Mandela in South Africa, or Maryse Condé in the Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, among others. His poetry invites the reader to become a privileged witness to a process of deterritorialization fully embraced by a poet-traveller released from any center, geographical, cultural, political, and otherwise. Maunick navigates seas and lands at the edges of peripheries, where all destinations are ultimately dissolved because of the narrow lands which force him onto limitless journeys.
Keywords
Maunick, Poetry, Métissage, Mauritian literature, Exile
References
Amado, J. (1992). Le Poète: L’ile et L’univers. Itineraires et Contacts de Cultures, 8-9.
Assibatu, S. (2021). PROJECT-ÎLES.
Bachelard, G. (2015). The Poetics of Space. Penguin Classics.
Certeau, M. d. (1987). La fable mystique. Gallimard.
Daniélou, J. (1945). Platonisme et théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de saint Grégoire de Nysse. Aubier.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Bloomsbury.
Delpech, C. (2008). Édouard Glissant : Au zénith de l’exil, une poétique de la démesure. Dans S. Kassab-Charb, S. Zliti-Fitouri, & L. Cery (Éds.), Autour d’Edouard Glissant. Lectures, épreuves, extensions d’une poétique de la Relation, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux. 87-105.
Dix, H. (2022). The Poetics of Exile and Return. Autofiction and Cultural Memory, 67-79.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Glissant, E. (1985). Le discours antillais. Seuil.
Heidegger, M. (1988). Being and Time. Blackwell.
Joubert, J.-L. (2005). La Poésie mauricienne d’aujourd’hui. Francophonia, 125-132.
Joubert, J.-L. (2009). Edoaurd Maunick – Poete metis insulaire.
Lionnet, F. (1989). The Politics and Aesthetics of Metissage. Dans Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender and Self-Portraiture, Cornell University Press, 1-31.
Lionnet, F. (2022). Under the Sign of Ariel: Disputed Territories, Rising Tides, and Literary Mauritius. Comparative Literature, 74, 264-272.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Maunick, E. (1954). Ces Oiseaux du sang. The Regent Press and Stationery.
Maunick, E. (1964). Les Manèges de la mer. Présence Africaine.
Maunick, E. (1964). L’essentiel d’un exil (poème). Présence Africaine, 192-194.
Maunick, E. (1966). Mascaret ou le Livre de la mer et de la mort, poèmes. Préface de Jacques Howlett. Présence Africaine.
Maunick, E. (1970). Fusillez-mo. Présence Africaine.
Maunick, E. (1976). Ensoleillé vif, 50 paroles et une parabase. Préface de Léopold Sédar Senghor. Éditions Saint-Germain-des-Prés / Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions Africaines.
Maunick, E. (1979). En Mémoire du mémorable, suivi de Jusqu’en terre Yoruba. L’Harmattan.
Maunick, E. (1983). Désert-archipel, suivi de Cantate païenne pour Jésus-fleuve. Publisud.
Maunick, E. (1989). Anthologie personnelle. Arles: Acte Sud.
Maunick, E. (1989). Paroles pour solder la mer. Gallimard.
Maunick, E. (1990). Toi Laminaire: italiques pour Aimé Césaire. Editions de l’Océan Indien.
Maunick, E. (2000). Seul le poeme. Editiions Phi.
Maunick, E. (2006). 50 quatrains pour narguer la mort. Bartholdi.
Maunick, E. (2019). Manière de dire non à la mort – 1954-2004. Immedia.
Rogers, D. (2013). The Poetics of Cartography and Habitation: Home as a Repository of Memories, Housing. Theory and Society, 30, 262-280.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Rouabhi, M. (1985). Archives de la littérature noir.
Rowell, C. H. (1989). Edouard Maunick: A Poetic Voice for Cultural Exchange: An Interview and Selected Poems. Callaloo, 40, 490-505.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Sainsbury, D. (2019). Towards a Minor Poetry: Reading Twentieth-Century French Poetry with Deleuze–Guattari and Bakhtin. Paragraph, 42, 135-153.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Šopova, J. (1994). Edouard J. Maunick talks to Jasmina Sopova. The UNESCO Courrier, XLVII, 4-7.
[View Article] [Google Scholar]
Spear, T. (2021). Edoaurd. J. Maunick.
Tranquille, D. (2000). Paroles d’ile. Educational Production Limited.
Tranquille, D. (2005). The Metis, the Misfit? Interrogating Representations of Métissage in Mauritian Literature. Revi Kiltir Kreo, 29-45.
Cite This Article
D. Tranquille, “Only the Poem Can Speak and Write the Limitless Journey of Errancy: Reading Edouard Maunick’s Poetry,” Yatharth 1(2) (2025) 252004. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17178730
Rights & Permission
This is an open access article published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) International License, which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. No permission is needed to reuse this content under the terms of the license.
For uses not covered above, please contact the Scholarly Publication Rights Department.