Tristan Cassir
- France -
Tristan Cassir, born in 1991 in Les Lilas, is a French poet and architect with diverse roots stretching across Lebanon, Argentina, and Egypt. From a young age, he cultivated a passion for poetic expression, particularly through orality. His deep appreciation for listening to and reciting poetry aloud emerged early in his life. Simultaneously, his practice of classical guitar, coupled with a heightened sensitivity to the rhythms and sounds of words—nurtured by rap—led him to accompany other poets as a musician in his youth. This intimate interplay between poetry and music allowed Tristan to develop a distinctive poetic voice, deeply influenced by the Beat Generation as well as authors such as Pessoa, Darwish, and Lautréamont.
For Tristan, poetry transcends the boundaries of art. It represents a vital necessity, a means of awakening to reality that aims to "simultaneously liberate the realm of the possible and that of the imagined." His quest for a poetry that remains open to the world, shaped by time, encounters, and places, infuses each of his works. As both an architect and a poet, he enriches each discipline through their mutual interaction, allowing them to inspire and inform one another. In this ongoing dialogue between the tangible and the intangible, Tristan draws essential inspiration, where reality and imagination strive to merge. One of his creations, La Place hypothétique de l'arbre—a wooden agora he co-designed and co-constructed for communal deliberation—embodies his aspiration to materialize a convergence of spiritual, spatial, and political dimensions.
The poet and philosopher Christian Cavaillé characterizes Tristan Cassir’s works as poems where "uprisings, explosive bursts, fault lines, and escape routes are expressed through engaged / fervent / raw words, denouncing the wounds inflicted upon countries like Lebanon and Palestine with their shattered prospects. Yet, these texts also advance under the gentle glow of the great star / stretching across this mundane world. An insubordinate lyricism reveals the intricate interplay between poetic phrasing and the world's architexture, improvising dance with each gesture... Singing laughter / Dancing scars... Fomenting the imperfect anatomy of our futures."
Rossella Nicolò, critic and author, describes Tristan’s poetry as "a journey through the poet’s roots, as well as an existential pilgrimage, an intimate quest across the roads, sands, and rocks of the traversed lands. Firmly anchored in his origins, Tristan is also a global citizen. His poetry, while deeply rooted in his identity, transcends borders to embrace universal sentiments: revolt, exile, oblivion, memory, absence, bodies, the colors of the earth, the refrains of a night, friendship, a wordless dialogue, hope, the impossible... His writing, defying conventions, navigates the realm of possibilities, balancing fidelity to reality with a desire to reframe that reality through a new, captivating life experience that celebrates a reinvented humanity, following the winding path of life."
Tristan is currently working on a writing project that takes the form of an inquiry into his multiple roots. Through this exploration, he seeks to delve into the essence of his identity, his identities, and by extension, ours, in order to dismantle the rigid frameworks that confine us all.
He has published three collections with Éditions L'Harmattan: Sarabande (2021), Écho des murailles du présent (2017), and Pointe Rouge (2012). Some of his texts have been translated into Turkish, Italian, and English, and have appeared in various literary journals, including Il Saggio, Şiirden dergisi, and L’Orient-Le-Jour. He has also participated in numerous poetic events, such as the Voix Vives de Méditerranée en Méditerranée festival, Napolipoesia nel Parco, and the Printemps des Auteurs et des Poètes in Dieppe, where he alternates between the roles of musician (guitar) and reciter.
Poetry
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Extract from Echo of Today’s Walls / Extrait de Echo des murailles du présent
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Too much, unpublished / Trop, inédit
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Liban / Lebanon
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Air holes – praise / Trous d’air – éloge
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Extract from Cyclades / Extrait de Cyclades
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In the earthly night / Dans la nuit terrestre
