Edouard J. Maunick

Mauritian poet, critic, and translator Edouard Joseph Marc Maunick was born in the village of Flacq in 1931. He worked as a librarian in Port Louis before immigrating to Paris in 1960, where he wrote and directed for Coopération Radiophonique and later became the director of UNESCO’s Collection of Representative Works.

Maunick’s poems are often infused with the imagery of his Mauritian homeland. In an interview with Research in African Literatures, Maunick noted, “When you open your eyes to the world the first time, the first images, the first sounds, the first taste … well, everything for me came from that island.… And I soon decided to give any talent I may have to the service of that island—to name it, to describe it—an inner description—and send it to the larger world.”

Maunick’s poetry collections include Les Oiseaux du Sang (1954), Les Manèges de la Mer (1964), and De Sable et de Cendre: Poèmes (1996). His work is featured in the anthologies The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (1963) and The Negritude Poets (1975).
 
Maunick’s honors include the Apollinaire Prize for Poetry. He lives in Paris.