Contemporary French Poetics finds its origin in part in the International Colloquium on French and Francophone Literature in the 1990's held at Dalhousie University in September 1998. A certain number of the papers given at that time, and since reworked in some fair measure, take their place here alongside other studies subsequently invited. In all they form a broad and varyingly focused set of cogent and pertinent appraisals of very recent French, and to some degree francophone, poetic practice and its shifting, becoming conceptual underpinnings. Studies offered range from those devoted to the work of established contemporary figures such as Bonnefoy and Du Bouchet, Stetie and Deguy, Noel and Chedid to discussions of younger generation writing by poets as diverse as Pinson and Leclair, Bancquart and Emaz, Maulpoix and Despres, Morency and Zins. All center, however, upon work essentially produced over the last ten years.