Umar Timol was born in 1970 in Mauritius, studied in London and writes in French. He opts for a ‘vagrant language’, peppered with neologisms. He sees his poetry as a quest for sense, but also for sensuality and the shadowy regions in himself. For a long time Timol wanted to throw off the yoke of Western poetic tradition and go in search of new horizons, but now Timol admits that he cannot escape his own history. Instead he aspires to take every form and style, and in fact every genre, and appropriate them for himself.

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