All Keyboards are Legitimate is an anthology featuring an incredible cast of contemporary poets responding to the work of 19th century French poet Jules Laforgue (1860-87).

Laforgue, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, moved to Tarbes in the Pyrenees at the age of 6, later living in Paris and Berlin, where he was reader to the German Empress Augusta. He learned English by reading Shakespeare with the governess Leah Lee, who he married in December 1886 in St Barnabas Church, London – the same church where T. S. Eliot would marry Valerie Fletcher. Known as one of the innovators of vers libre, Laforgue published alongside Rimbaud, translated Walt Whitman, and published several key poetry collections: Les Complaintes (1885), L’Imitation de Notre-Dame la Lune (1886), and the posthumous free verse collection Derniers vers (1890). He died of tuberculosis in 1887.

All Keyboards are Legitimate is edited and introduced by Suzannah V. Evans. Suzannah is a poet and critic based in Bristol. She is the author of pamphlets Brightwork and Marine Objects / Some Language and the winner of an Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment and a Northern Writers’ Award. Her work appears in New Poetries VIII (Carcanet) and has been performed at international festivals. Her PhD thesis was written on T. S. Eliot and the Implications of Laforgue and Corbière.

Featuring: Kayo Chingonyi, Isabel Galleymore, Holly Corfield Carr, Christopher Reid, Ella Frears, Jessica Mookherjee, Cliff Forshaw, Degna Stone, J. R. Carpenter, Bhanu Kapil, Maurice Riordan, Gillian Allnutt, Gareth Reeves, Kayo Chingonyi, Jennifer Wong, Walter Conrad Arensberg, Khairani Barokka, Rowan Evans, Mark Ford, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Jay Gao, Hannah Hodgson, Nick Makoha, Hannah Sullivan, Will Harris, Katharine Towers, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Niall Campbell, Zoë Skoulding, Beverley Bie Brahic, Hart Crane, Francesca Bratton, Romalyn Ante, Suzannah Evans, Emily Hasler, Angela Leighton, Nancy Campbell, Seán Hewitt, Harriet Tarlo, L. Kiew, Rishi Dastidar, Tolu Agbelusi, Mina Gorji, Helena Fornells, Marina Martino, Jenna Clake, Sam Bootle, Gail McConnell, Douglas Dunn, S.K. Perry, Eley Williams, Tina Kover, Clive Scott

ISBN / 184 pages / 190 x 145mm / casebound / made with Wintan, Stardream and Arena papers.

Anthology.