RATP Poetry Prize, 2025 finalist
Finalist, at age 17, in the Grand Prix Poésie RATP with the poem Danse sur les dunes (in French).
The contest
The Grand Prix Poésie RATP is France's largest amateur poetry competition, open to all ages, drawing several thousand submissions every year. Danse sur les dunes was selected among the 100 finalists of the 2025 edition.
The poem and its inspiration
The poem ("Dance on the dunes") was born from a trip to Tunisia, and in particular from a day spent in the Grand Erg Oriental, the sea of dunes of the Tunisian Sahara. At the crest of the dunes, the wind tears thin streams of sand that ripple like a veil: this is the "silk veil, fine as a sigh" that runs through the whole text.
The wind, a "fierce poet", sends it whirling, embraces it, then pretends to forget it. It ripples "like shivering water", becomes in the cold of the morning "a serpent with scales of frost", curls around a mirage and an oasis, and picks up on its way a scent of jasmine and a hint of incense, two smells that recall Tunisia. The poem closes by letting it go, "free and elusive".
The text has fourteen lines in rhyming couplets, to keep the steady rhythm of a dance.
The publication
The poem was published in the anthology Cent poèmes pour voyager – Finalistes du Grand Prix Poésie RATP 2025, by Éditions Bruno Doucey (22 August 2025).