Christopher Moncrieff is a European poet, linguist and literary translator from French, German and Romanian. His numerous translations, including novels by Gracq, Flaubert, Zeller, Augiéras, Musil, Kafka and Eliade have been widely published; his poetry, on which he is now concentrating along with novellas, short stories and plays, has appeared in Romania and the UK, with a new collection forthcoming.
A frequent traveller in Central and Eastern Europe, which is a profound influence on his work, he speaks several languages of the region, among them Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovene, Greek and Aromanian, and lived for three months in a Greek Orthodox monastery. His writing has been described as ‘dream-like’, ‘irréel’, ‘multi-layered’ or ‘translated from another language’, reflecting the process by which he conceives poetry and prose in a foreign language then transposes it into English.
Before beginning to write full-time he saw professional military service in Europe, the Near East and North America during the Cold War, then went on to produce son et lumière-style shows in Germany, France, Britain and the USA, living for long periods in Paris and Los Angeles. He read Theology at Oxford, where his tutor was Kallistos Ware, and has qualifications in design as well as on the military staff. He occasionally speaks at literary forums, campaigns for the acceptance of neuro- and gender diversity, and has worked as a specialist mentor for young adults on the autism spectrum.
He is currently working on a cycle of prose-poem novellas written from a neurodivergent, non-binary perspective.
