Desiderata

Musician Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s kaleidoscopic foray into collage and poetry, translated and reprinted for the first time in 50 years.

Desiderata is a collection of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s poetry, photos, and diaristic fragments from her visit to New York City in the winter of 1975. Only eighteen at the time, Descloux fell into the orbits of the nascent No Wave scene festering in Lower Manhattan, where she befriended Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and ZE Records founder Michel Esteban. Desiderata charts the musician’s early ambitions as a writer, revealing a potent poetic voice that careens from acid-tinged social observations to outright Dadaist semantic revelry, interspersed with collages and hand-written notes. Originally composed entirely in French, this is the first time these works have ever appeared in English and this edition includes the original French facsimile bound tête-bêche with the new English translation.

Martine-Elisabeth ＂Lizzy＂ Mercier Descloux (1956-2004) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, composer, actress, writer, and painter. She collaborated with a wide range of musicians including Wally Badarou and Chet Baker.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator and recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, and an NEA Translation Fellowship. Her translations include Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things, Kamel Daoud’s Zabor, or the Psalms, and Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying.