A broadcast by If I Can’t Dance (Radio Emma) to mark the launch of their publication Anemones: A Simone Weil Project by Lisa Robertson.

Moving between poetry, performance, the epistolary and scholarly research, Anemones: A Simone Weil Project is an experiment in thinking ‘near and with’ philosopher and political activist Simone Weil. Rooted in Robertson’s long-term research on troubadour poetry, it centres on a new annotated translation of Weil’s essay ‘What the Occitan Inspiration Consists Of,’ written in 1942 for the Marseilles-based anti-fascist literary journal Les Cahiers du Sud. In the text Weil elevates the troubadour concept of love to a practice of political resistance that rejects force in all its forms. Robertson dwells on the transhistorical potential of this concept from the violent context in which it emerged to the troubling conditions of the present. Embracing actualised and suppressed histories, Robertson’s work testifies to words, friendship and readership as resistance across distances.

During the festive launch of the publication at Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam, this radio show - hosted by Anik Fournier (curator archive and research at If I Can't Dance) - welcomes the book’s author, translator and editor Lisa Robertson, contributor Benny Nemer, designers Johanna Ehde & Elisabeth Rafstedt of Rietlanden Women’s Office, and Frédérique Bergholtz (director If I Can’t Dance) for a conversation.