Nightboat mourns the passing of the French poet, translator, critic, and choreographer Stéphane Bouquet, who died in Paris on August 24, 2025, at the age of 57. He was the author of nine collections of poetry, as well as several essays on poetry. He has published books on filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Gus Van Sant, as well as screenplays for feature films, non-fiction films, and short films, and has translated poets including Paul Blackburn, James Schuyler, and Peter Gizzi into French. Nightboat published two of Bouquet’s books in English, both translated by Lindsay Turner, The Next Loves (2019) and Common Life (2023). The former was praised in The New York Times Book Review for its “wry soulfulness,” and was longlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry. Lindsay Turner said today: “Stéphane Bouquet found in American poets—the New York School in particular—a match for his own brilliance and vitality on and off the page. His work is original and capacious, bringing together European and American poetic investments, the head and the heart, the body and the spirit. Sincere, funny, wry, and loving, Stéphane’s work, with its intensity and integrity, was an incredible joy to translate and will remain, I hope, a joy to read.”
Image: Stéphane Bouquet in New York City in 2019, celebrating the publication of The Next Loves.