Pierre Alferi (Paris, 1963) is a poet, writer, essayist, lecturer in the History of Literary Creation at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA), and the eldest son of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. He also studied philosophy, but since finishing his studies, Alferi more actively pursued writing – both prose and, even more so, poetry. Alferi grew up as Pierre Derrida but decided at a young age to take on his mother’s name, wanting to be recognized on his own terms. Now he is a renowned poet in both France and America, often traveling there for performances. Central to Alferi’s poetics is placing the writer – and therefore also his readers – into experimental situations. He sees literature as an ‘expérience transformatrice’ (tranformative experience) that opposes the ‘conditioned poetry-reflex’. Alferi writes innovative poems in which he experiments with language, everyday expressions, slang and perfectly constructed sentences. He also creates 'cinépoèmes et films parlants’ (film-poems and talking films), in which image and movement provide additional meaning to the text.

since the late twentieth century the tendency has been centrifugal

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