Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 10 hours ago
Battery Park City stone masons Willem Paillant and Rene Lopcy read from Birago Diop's poem "Souffles" ("Breaths") in French and English. Paillant and Lopcy installed Diop's poem on the Poetry Path in Battery Park City, along with 19 other poems and poem fragments etched into brass plates.
Birago Diop was born in 1906 outside Dakar, Senegal. He moved to France for training in veterinary medicine, where he became involved with the Négritude literary and artistic movement. He made his literary debut in 1947 with the massively-popular Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba (Présence africaine, 1967), for which he won the Grand prix littéraire de l'Afrique Occidentale Française. He continued to document folktales, write poetry, and work in veterinary medicine until his death in 1989.
Battery Park City stone masons Willem Paillant and Rene Lopcy read from Birago Diop's poem "Souffles" ("Breaths") in French and English. Paillant and Lopcy installed Diop's poem on the Poetry Path in Battery Park City, along with 19 other poems and poem fragments etched into brass plates.
Birago Diop was born in 1906 outside Dakar, Senegal. He moved to France for training in veterinary medicine, where he became involved with the Négritude literary and artistic movement. He made his literary debut in 1947 with the massively-popular Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba (Présence africaine, 1967), for which he won the Grand prix littéraire de l'Afrique Occidentale Française. He continued to document folktales, write poetry, and work in veterinary medicine until his death in 1989.
