Nostom
Monchoachi
Translated from French and Creole to English byTyler Grand-Pre
2026


///////// 64 Pages
///////// 14.8 x 21 cm
ISBN: 978-1-915341-24-2
 
 
Nostrom is a long funeral song that follows the call of a storyteller to an indefinite community as they contemplate the death of their own. As it shifts between song and silence against the backdrop of Martinique’s colonial history, this poem is a meditation on the co-presence and materiality Monchoachi’s languages: the way rhythm and repetition carry philosophical weight; the way new or old words bounce and bend in the mouth as one learns or relearns their meaning and feeling; and, most notably, the way the poem turns, vocally and textually, between French and Creole on juxtaposing pages. Therefore, this translation or, as Andrés Ajens would put it, this trans-hallucination renders Nostrom into two Englishes–one contemporary and one experimental Middle English–in order to open the language up to the poetic affordances of its non-standard, 'vernacular' past. Like the original, this creative translation invites readers to listen and to embody the listening of an-other’s speech rather than decode it.
 
 
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Monchoachi is a Martinican poet, essayist, translator, and thinker who has been publishing poetry and essays in Creole and French for over forty years. As one of the pioneers of activist writers and intellectuals who turned to Creole as a viable medium of postcolonial expression in the 1970s and 80s, Monchoachi has since become an important figure of contemporary Caribbean literature. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Dissidans, Mantèg, Lémistè, La case où se tient la lune, l’espère-geste, and Retour à la parole sauvage–as well as organizer of Lakouzémi, a community led project and journal that brought together thinkers, dancers, musicians, and artists invested in local history and culture. He has received major literary honors including the Prix Max Jacob and the Carbet Caribbean Prize. His work is foundational for discussions of language, ecology, and the afterlives of colonialism in the Francophone world.
 
 
Tyler Grand-Pre is a writer, teacher, translator, and multi-media creative-critic invested in the materialities of language and place across the African Diaspora. He teaches as an Assistant Professor in English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. His research explores the experiential and symbolic meanings of different housing infrastructures that have come to describe Black domestic being in the urban and rural settings of the US and Caribbean. He has translated between French and English for Routledge and the NGO Women's Global Education Project. His writing appears in Small Axe Blog and New Labor Forum, with his latest publication on Aimé Césaire, entitled "Inflecting the French," appearing in Comparative Literature by Duke University Press.