Sylvie Kandé is the author of three collections of poetry published by Gallimard. Lagon, lagunes: Tableau de mémoire (2000) was postfaced by Édouard Glissant. La quête infinie de l’autre rive: épopée en trois chants (2011) received the 2017 Prix Lucienne Gracia-Vincent under the auspices of the Fondation Saint-John Perse and is now published in German by Matthes & Seitz, and in English by Wesleyan University Press as The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos (2022)—its translator, Alexander Dickow, received a 2018 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. Gestuaire (2016) received the 2017 Prix Louise Labé and is anthologized in German as Stiller Tausch (Lyrik Kabinett, Hanser, 2024). Translated into English by Nancy Naomi Carlson, it was published as Gestuary in February 2026 by Seagull Books.
Sylvie Kandé has performed in venues such as the Kennedy Center, NYU, Columbia University, Villa Albertine, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the French Cultural Services in New Delhi, and the Poetry Festival in Berlin. Excerpts of Maya Angelou, Salgado Maranhão, and Sylvie Kandé’s poetry were selected by Yosvany Terry and Alicia Hall Moran for Atlantic Connections, a song cycle commissioned by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts and performed at Farkas Hall and the Harvard Art Museums. Kandé’s poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies, notably Poésie du Louvre (Seghers), republished by the New York Review of Books as At the Louvre in 2024.