Premier millimetre

The Russian poet Marina Tsvetaïeva wrote: “Poetry is the first millimetre of air above the earth.” Speech in and with this first millimetre is neither harmless, false nor dead. Laura Vazquez gives a reading-performance. It is a reading of language alive in the body, the voice and the space. Laura Vazquez writes poems, novels, plays and operas. In 2023, she received the Goncourt Poetry Prize for her entire body of work. La main dans la main, her first collection, received the Prix de la Vocation in 2014. La semaine perpétuelle, her first novel, received a special mention from the Prix Wepler and the Prix de la page 111. Her novel Les forces was published in 2025 by Éditions du Sous-sol. It received the Prix des Inrockuptibles, the Prix Blu Jean-Marc Roberts, the Prix des lecteurs de Télérama, the Prix Hessel and the Prix Décembre. It was also shortlisted for the Prix Le Monde and the Prix Médicis. Her texts and poems have been translated into Chinese, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Romanian, Italian, Greek and Arabic. Laura Vazquez was a resident of the Villa Médicis in Rome in 2023. She regularly gives public readings and performances in France and around the world: Festival Actoral Festival Oh les beaux jours de Marseille Maison de la poésie de Paris Centre Pompidou Théâtre Usine C in Montreal Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, China Musée d'art contemporain de Genève in Switzerland Norsk Litteraturfestival in Norway Festival Poetry International in Rotterdam, the Netherlands Institut français de Madrid in Spain Berlin Poetry Festival in Germany Her texts have been the subject of numerous collaborations with artists such as Rebeka Warrior, Lorraine de Sagazan, Anne Paceo, Hubert Colas, Lucie Antunes, Philippe Quesne, Elise Blotière, Philippe Jarrigeon and Théo Mercier. Her plays are performed in France and internationally, notably at Théâtre de la Bastille, the Odéon, the Festival d’Avignon, International Theater Amsterdam, the Modern Drama Valley Festival in Shanghai, the Berliner Festspiele, Centro Dramático Nacional in Madrid, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Théâtre de Strasbourg and Vidy Lausanne. She co-directs the journal Muscle with Roxana Hashemi and publishes previously unpublished texts by around fifty authors writing in different languages.