In three collections, Élise Turcotte saw (What she sees), lived (The shape of the day) and defeated (When I return). This first book of poetry since 2016 offers a lush form and content, present in the above-mentioned collections, but also in his novels, which we think of The appearance of the deer or to Scent of tuberose.
Posted at 6:30 p.m.
To speak of “victory” about the poet’s approach could obscure the struggles that run through it. All of Élise Turcotte’s work stems, in fact, from a consciousness that advances despite death with what that implies in terms of fragility and disenchantment. She therefore took the time necessary to deliver this anti-fog collection, the first accomplishment in itself.
As the superb cover shows, a work – Eye Seeker – by Quebec muralist Danaé Brissonnet, all the senses are stirred in this book of organic and complex universes where the author resists nostalgia and conceives the future “beautiful like a threatened animal”.
The poet is a wild child who remembers having left the “nowhere” of hotels and airports in order to better see the wind and listen to the trees.
Élise Turcotte continues to write with her dead, here Joe Brainard, visual artist and New York author ofI Remember, died at the age of 52 in 1994 – an artist of memory if ever there was one. With him, the Quebec poet remembers things that have fallen, but also those that remain standing. She dreams of tomorrow by learning the language of seedlings in the company of gifted animals.
The poet does not write on another planet for all that. She has seen the children in cages, the shootings and the current illness which no longer needs to be named since it “consumes us without the slightest fire”. The everyday finds its place in his poems, but small, as it should be, serving above all as a springboard to overcome fear.
Strong and surprising images build a prayer to children, the place of laughter against a lost world, flora and fauna stronger than collapses. This collection exudes meticulous work, the search for the right word, confidence in poetry, this “language of the sky”. Against all odds: crumbling, loss, decay.
Faced with this overflow, the poet raises her eyes and sees the tree, its verticality, its wisdom, its raison d’être. She is back ; the revolt continues.
When I return
Elise Turcotte
Chillwind
112 pages