One of France's most important contemporary poets, Eugene Guillevic (1907-97) was born in Carnac in Brittany, and although he never learned the Breton language, his personality is deeply marked by his feeling of oneness with his homeland. His poetry has a remarkable unity, driven by his desire to use words to bridge a tragic gulf between man and a

Eugene Guillevic, who died in 1997, was one of France's most important contemporary poets. Dating from 1961, Carnac marks the beginning of Guillevic's mature life as a poet. A single poem divided into several parts, it evokes the rocky, sea-bound, unfinished landscape of Brittany with its sacred objects and its great silent sense of waiting. The texts are brief but have a grave, meditative serenity, as the poet seeks to effect balance and help us "to make friends with nature", as well as to live in a universe which is chaotic and often frightening. In this poetry of description -- where entire landscapes are built up from short, intense texts -- language is reduced to its essentials, as words are placed on the page "like a dam against time", and aspire to what John Montague calls their "mystic materialism".