Lover of rare words
Between “phthalate”, “compendium” and “silage”, nothing will be easy in the collection Incidents (and other rumors of the century) of Evelyne Gagnon, who presents herself as not very accessible. Here, an extreme complexity overloads the effects, provokes outbursts of strangeness: “micrometeorites under the skin / our desires on stilts / are rocking / make-up dolls / gray matter magma”. These “desires on stilts” which “rock each other” are perplexing to say the least. These appearances of “anything” put off. We are told of the “asphalt lingerie / where the crows hibernate” as well as “the ridge sunk into its heel / like the worm in the apple / which lines the arteries of a pot-bellied stranded”. However, in “Hunting”, the terror raised by the murderers who aim at their disturbing victims, like the fate of these women too often objects. But on the brink of extinction, at the end of the race, the poet will leave us only “elastane dreams” inhabited by “radiolar dragonflies”. Not easy to define, this poetry.
Hugues Corriveau
Incidents (and other rumors of the century)
★★1/2
Evelyne Gagnon, Le Noroît “Initiale”, Montreal, 2022,160 pages (in bookstores August 30)
Write in ‘the full shadow
of the world”
Rarely was a title as relevant as that of life poem, by Marc Alexandre Oho Bambe. Because the whole collection of this winner of the 2014 Condé poetry prize and the 2015 French Academy Verlaine prize is an act of faith in saving and living poetry. For the author, determined to live, at all costs, poetry is the only way to access a part of the euphoria carried by the words that make us live. The entire collection testifies to an irremissible belief that this language carries vital energy: “I learned to write in the dark. // And I’m still learning to write. // To dispel the darkness, leave a trace and make room, all the room for beauty. Not a page that is not of this water. Isn’t it true that “The sun shines / In the smiles of children / Who speak to the stars / And travel on the back of blue whales”? The words pitch and dance in this poetry of passion, they punctuate the urgency of the loving heart, and that is already very rare.
Hugues Corriveau
life poem
★★★1/2
Marc Alexandre Oho Bambe, Inkwell Memory, Montreal, 2022, 160 pages (in bookstores August 29)
A house of one’s own
Le hoquet en pulpes, the first collection of poetry by Éloïse Leblanc, offers its epigraph to the bias of things, by Francis Ponge. No wonder: the quest for the collection is entangled in everyday objects. From the outset, we find a narrator trampled on in her intimate space, flouted by an alterity that disturbs: “the borders of my body are irritated / by the points of your certainties”. His word, even, is bruised: “we will extinguish my voice when we leave”. In struggle, she cultivates a disarray colonized by what surrounds her — plants, fruits, objects —, seeking the strength of self-affirmation: “I hesitate to hang my fists on the walls / plaster under my fingernails / by dint of apologizing”. This complex symbiosis brings about a reconciliation with its environment, leading to a “we” that respects its sovereignty: “my body / soiled / will be clean for me”. In her brushy verses, Éloïse Leblanc embodies an unexpected universe, peeling fine metaphors and cutting inspirational notes of hope.
Yannick Marcoux
Music
★★★
Éloïse Leblanc, The house on fire, Montreal, 2022, 136 pages
Sacrificial poetry
André Gide said that “the most beautiful works of men are stubbornly painful. What would the story of happiness be? Nothing, except what prepares it, then what destroys it, is told”. A proposal to which subscribes Transparent mourning, second collection by Virginie Savard. Oscillating between distress and despair, the poetic figure seems incapable of removing his conscience from the injustices of the world: “I pick the desolations / millennia to come”. Her days follow one another in a sadness from which she struggles to free herself, searching in vain for “a present / habitable / outside of the daily desolation / of the successive deaths of me”. His intimate affliction, unveiled with courage, is dubbed a deep empathy for the living that surrounds him, condemned by poverty or by the ecological crisis. The crisis is total, without hope, and beauty, rare, is tormented: “I would like to hold / something warm / that won’t die”. A collection that takes the bit between the teeth, to avoid being swallowed up in its darkness.
Yannick Marcoux
Transparent mourning
★★1/2
Virginie Savard, Triptych, Montreal, 2022, 144 pages