<DIV><DIV>ELLES is the first bilingual anthology of its kind. It introduces English-speaking readers to some of the best French poetry written by women over the last twenty years. Martin Sorrell has chosen a selection of work from seventeen distinctive and diverse poets, and he has provided lively facing-page verse translations, poems in their own right, alongside the originals.<DIV>Martin Sorrell's Introduction situates the poets in their context and discusses the issues which confronted him as compiler and translator, not least as a man responding to creative work written by women. Each poet introduces herself with an essay on her conception of poetry and her own position as a writer. These biographical pieces are published in French and in an English translation. There is also a selected bibliography for each poet.<DIV>The Afterword, by Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron - Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, and a leading specialist in modern French literature - is also published in French and in an English translation. The poets represented in ELLES are Marie-Claire Bancquart, Christiane Baroche, Geneviève Bon, Claude de Burine, Andrée Chedid, Louise Herlin, Jeanne Hyvrard, Leslie Kaplan, Josée Lapeyrère, Jo-Ann Léon, Anne Portugal, Gisèle Prassinos, Jacqueline Risset, Amina Saïd, Sylvia Baron Supervielle, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Céline Zins.</DIV>