La Valsainte
Les éditions La Valsainte publishing house was founded in 1999 in the Valsainte neighborhood in Vevey, on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. They published in facsimile the book by Jean-Jacques Dufour, winegrower from the Vevey region who emigrated to the United States in 1796, and founded the town of Vevay, capital of Switzerland County in the state of Indiana. This book was then translated and edited in French in a richly illustrated translation. A new illustrated English edition was subsequently co-published with Purdue University, Indiana.
In 2010, Les éditions La Valsainte and the Poésies association published and distributed 50,000 copies of a pocket-sized poetic anthology worldwide when the 13th Francophonie summit in Montreux took place. They received the official logo of this summit. They then published a second pocket anthology. In May 2021, they published Anthology 3, and distributed nearly 5,000 copies on May 19 and May 20 in school establishments of the Vevey-Montreux region, as a personal gift intended for the pupils and teachers of said establishments.
Yvon Bordet
Yvon Bordet est directeur des Éditions La Valsainte à Vevey (Suisse) et chercheur associé au Centre Lucien Tesnière de Traitement Automatique des Langues à l’Université de Franche-Comté à Besançon (France). Spécialisé dans l’enseignement du Français Langue Étrangère, il a enseigné le français langue maternelle et le Français Langue Étrangère (FLE) en France, en Suisse, aux Etats-Unis.
His research at the University reveals that the emphasis of teaching poetry and literature as an early age, and at the beginner’ stage for those learning a second language, can and ought to be made a priority. Dr. Yves Bordet has developed a software available on line showing that some literary texts are accessible as of the age of six. Said software provides the age to which a text is accessible for a student schooled in the French language, as well as the European Level (from A1 to C2) for a student learning French as a second language.
In literature, as in architecture, “only extreme simplicity leads to the sublime". Poetry is a form of extreme simplicity.