Life in 3 Lines / La Vie en 3 Lignes

By Fern Jean-Joseph
Translated by Annabelle Bouji

Le Lys Bleu Éditions (2025)
ISBN-13: 978-1042266820

Review by Annabelle Bouji

Life in 3 Lines presents a deeply reflective exploration of life, love, loss, and resilience through the prism of haiku poetry. Fern Jean-Joseph, a bilingual poet based in London, brings these three-line meditations into a thoughtful dialogue with French and English sensibilities. The collection invites readers to experience and even live haiku through its interplay of linguistic clarity and understated emotional resonance.

The poems are paired with delicate visual elements: sumi-e brush illustrations, chigiri-e collages, and references to ikebana that echo the themes of simplicity, transience, and balance. These visual counterparts deepen the haiku’s emotional reach. The bilingual presentation allows readers to appreciate subtleties in translation without diluting poetic intensity.

Each haiku stands alone yet contributes to a broader narrative that weaves through nature, memory, and contemporary reflections, including climate anxiety and the aftermath of war. This positioning situates haiku not only as a literary choice, but as a living aesthetic practice.

Fern Jean-Joseph’s strength lies in her ability to transfer haiku’s minimalist form into a modern European context. The poems are spare yet evocative, and the pairing with visual art creates a gentle, immersive experience. The bilingual format could pose a challenge; translation can never fully replicate the original nuance but this very act reinforces haiku’s transcultural adaptability.

The thematic range is wide; from seasonal observation to political reflections but rather than feel diffuse, this variety underscores haiku’s capacity to encompass both personal quiet and public urgency.

Life in 3 Lines is a poetic bridge, a gentle yet powerful convergence of French literary mindfulness and Japanese aesthetic practice. The collection and its associated event offers a unique cultural moment for those seeking stillness in contemporary expression. Readers, students of Japanese art and poetry, and anyone drawn to meditative literature will find this work quietly compelling.

As translator, I encountered the delicate alchemy between brevity and depth in Fern Jean-Joseph’s haiku. Adapting her words while preserving their emotional resonance was a journey across three languages; an experience I hope will invite readers to embrace haiku’s quiet spaces.