As my plane touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport on a drizzly winter evening, I realised that I had completely overlooked the need to organise accommodation. Likewise, I had failed to contact any poets, nor indeed, had I succeeded in gaining any knowledge of French poetry beyond what had previously been fed to me. In the end, though, despite a half-hour walk in cold rain, I found a warm if somewhat over-priced hostel and, eventually, after hours rummaging through bookshops around the city, four editor/poets with four very different views of poetry and poetics.