The Ballad of Rue Belliard by Bill Direen

Issue 48 of brief magazine
ISSN 1175-9313

Occupying a complete issue of Auckland based writing journal brief, Bill Direen’s The Ballad of Rue Belliard celebrates the subtleties of language and the humour of life in a “peripheral” sector of Paris. His inventive use of English is a function of his linguistic alienation from (but admiration for) the subtleties of local French language in all its registers – elegant, vulgar, argotic ….