Defamiliarizing and Recycling: The Contemporary Poetic OVNIs and OFNIs of Jérôme Game and Sandra Moussempès

Since the 1990s, poetic practices have been revitalized in France through the incorporation of performance and new technologies, leading to the creation of new publics and an altered sense of poetry as a significant social action. The work of Jérôme Game and Sandra Moussempès is representative of this seachange in recent French poetry. Both poets employ strategies of defamiliarizing and recycling to recontextualize, play with, and question the sociopolitical status quo. Through formal and linguistic experimentation, they create "OVNIs" ("objets verbaux non identifies"). Game's 2017 text Salle d'embarquement and Moussempès's 2021 collection Cassandre à bout portant exemplify this new poetics.