Perfumes of Niger
In a prose collection, sometimes poetic, Brigitte Vaillancourt, born in Togo in 1978, recounts her uprooting from Montreal as a teenager when she had to follow her parents to Niger. It’s always exciting, and young readers will take real pleasure in following this new life, the metamorphoses that this immersion in a foreign country imposes. Without counting the enrichment of the vocabulary at which will traverse these texts without concession. From “navaquine” to “cowries”, from “bicycle chickens” to “morgue chickens”, the list of language exoticisms goes on. There is also a great emotion of the senses which develops new apprehensions of reality. The text always implies the very life of things: “In front of the dead villa of the cat-bird. Where dust eats away at the walls. I express the wish to no longer follow a misleading perfume. With a friend, the young girl is moved by their “laughs [qui] raise clouds of red sand. Very successful, this captivating story.
Hugues Corriveau
Hot season
★★★1/2
Brigitte Vaillancourt, Boréal “Poetry – Icebreaker”, Montreal, 2022, 136 pages. Teenagers and young adults.
Postmortem poetry
To propagate the altruistic thought of Emily Novalinga, who died suddenly in 2009, this collection of barely 12 poems is published. These Songs of the North are no less intended to reach children in Nunavik or everywhere, and are dedicated to making readers aware of northern realities. The poems are interspersed with excerpts from a meeting between Jean Désy and the author, the text of which appeared in Spiral (2009). In the introduction, we learn this revealing detail: “In Inuktitut, the word poem did not exist. As usual, the Inuit have invented a new word […] mitsilinnguaq[…] So, for them, the definition of the word poem has become: “to write words in another way of understanding”. The simplicity of the poems makes this collection very accessible: “Sounds of the winds / Sounds of the storm / Everything is heard and everything is happiness / Since I hear the northern lights”. As the poet points out: “The most moving poetry is born when we open our senses to the spirit of the world. » (French/English bilingual edition)
Hugues Corriveau
Northern Songs
★★★1/2
Text by Emily Nova-linga and illustrated by Tigris Altaica Sakda, Midnight Sun, Saint-Damien, 2022, 44 pages. 10 years and over.
The free white of the page
Lucie Bergeron has up her sleeve nearly forty novels for young people aged 6 to 12, an illustrated book for preschoolers and a novel for teens (In the heart of Florence, Soulières, 2019), but she had never published poetry before. You were my way of loving, his first collection, invites us into the world of Florence, a solitary teenager, orphan of her mother, who draws from the next blank page of her notebook an emancipatory strength and freedom. However, his attraction to a handsome boy with curly hair, his bluesman, offers him a livable life that rivals the escape of writing: “in my notebook I went forward / then I left behind / the present existed / the space of a double page / the page turned was the past / there I am still in the present moment”. Narrative poetry with uninhibited verses, You were my way of loving gives breath and voice to a life that seeks its wings, before taking flight.
Yannick Marcoux
You were my way of loving
★★★
Lucie Bergeron, Soulières publisher, Saint-Lambert, 2022, 160 pages. 12 years and over.
To browsers
After the success of poems for life (Isatis, 2015), Gilles Tibo takes poetry by the horns and offers us The voices of the world. Seventeen poems punctuate this album, which addresses various themes, including love and friendship, through winks, sketches or odes to beauty: “I heard the quivering of the poplars / They told a thousand golden dreams. With loose tongue, rhythmic verse, Tibo makes his verb vibrate by beating joyful notes. The deepest feelings are thus embellished, with the obvious desire to sow joy. The result, alas, is often blue flower, certain poems flowing in an ease which engenders indifference. The voices of the world nevertheless represents a nice introduction to the music of words and the rhythm of verse, specific to poetry. Illustrated by Janou-Eve LeGuerrier (The pelican and me, by Dominique Demers, Auzou, 2021), who participates in the celebration with a magnificent fanfare of colors. Resolutely tender and joyful.
Yannick Marcoux
The voices of the world
★★1/2
Text by Gilles Tibo, illustrated by Janou-Eve Leguerrier, Isatis, Montreal, 2022, 32 pages. 4 years and over.