Open a book by Carole David, at random, suggests the poet Benoît Jutras. “And you will see that his texts are always enigmas which give the illusion of being naked, but in fact it is a false simplicity. His texts are dense like a black beer. »
Posted at 6:00 p.m.
An analysis that also befits his most recent collection, The double program of the slain womanin which Carole David, inspired by a stay in Italy, observes the sad cycle of violence against women repeating itself, from the XVIand century to the present day. A tragic subject if ever there was one. “But with Carole, specifies the poet Chloé Savoie-Bernard, there is always something which survives, which resists death. »
At 67, Carole David is now one of the most important Quebec poets. In 2020, she won the Athanase-David Prize, the ultimate award in Quebec literature, and thereby joined giants such as Hubert Aquin, Marie-Claire Blais, Michel Tremblay and Nicole Brossard.
“I always say that I was introduced to poetry in two ways: at school and on the street, in bookstores in Saint-Denis,” says the writer in an interview. In her classes of the classical course, the young woman learns Latin and classical versification, reads Ovid. But at 16, she attended part of the 1970 Night of Poetry – the curfew imposed by her mother nevertheless allowing her to be caught up in several exhilarating performances, including that of Claude Gauvreau. Another life suddenly appears possible.
Class defector
Daughter of a mother born to Italian parents in Little Italy, and a father who had to provide for his 11 brothers and sisters early on, Carole David grew up in this middle class to which people who had known misery. The universe of his youth in Rosemont, on the border of Saint-Léonard, with American TV playing in the background, is that of a certain consumerist conformism, a suffocation that his work will never cease to reject.
At some point I learned that there was another world, that while we were going to Old Orchard, while buying whatever, that was the end of the shit, there were beatniks , there was Juliette Gréco.
carol david
” [M]has a deleterious vocation / begins early in the morning / I collect the fires / my ephelide hands are creepers / I leave the fresco / that I have been assigned, ”she writes in The double program of the slain woman, one of the most autobiographical verses of this book. It is from the fresco of this existence that awaited him that literature will have allowed him to tear himself away.
“My destiny was not writing. I’m a real class defector. For my mother, the best job was to be hired at Bell Telephone. My mother’s family worked in a factory, my grandfather was the victim of a violent work accident. These are traumas that make you say to yourself: “Don’t let me get caught here!” I was motivated to get out of there. »
Poetics of ordinary misfortune
Both clear and pithy, the poetry of Carole David, who published her first book in 1986, love terrorists, makes the synthesis of several currents, borrowing from the counter-culture its permissions, from formalism its requirement, from American poetry its narrativity and from the writing of women its revolt. A hybridity that undoubtedly explains at least in part why so many young Quebec poets, from all walks of life, claim their heritage.
With the counter-culture, there was suddenly a poetry that spoke of more everyday things. We could use the word “kraft” in a poem, whereas according to a certain idea of poetry, we had to remain in the very abstract. Suddenly, the poetry was referring to things I knew, kind of in the same spirit as pop art.
carol david
The setting of his books is often that of a North American life in cardboard. “This poetics of ordinary misfortune, of great history mixed with small ones, of dinners, taverns, poated girls, it’s very grounded in this imagination of the East, it’s very material, but Carole doesn’t pay homage to this broken reality either, underlines Benoît Jutras. Its raw material is humble, but it is constantly transformed. There are so many dimensions that make this work something almost sacred. »
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
carol david
Chloé Savoie-Bernard, for her part, praises the space created by Carole David within her own texts for the voices of others. She mentions in particular Handbook of poetry for young girls (2010), highlight of this work of empathy for those obliterated by official speeches.
“I was obsessed with how she relates to other texts, other writers. I like this idea of writing that is constantly accompanied by lots of other women. It is a book haunted by so many presences. Maybe that’s why her work is so important: her writing is influenced by that of others, but at the same time she has such a personal and unique voice. »
This way of accompanying, and allowing oneself to be accompanied, is one of the elegances of Carole David, a woman of extreme humility, who knows the current literary production like few other poets of her generation and who remains close to this youth. which she attended throughout her career as a teacher at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
She now belongs to the literary institution, but has never given up on her punk side and still enjoys participating in underground reading evenings. “I continue to be what I have always been: well angry, well revolted”, she says. Against social inequalities, so-called ordinary misogyny, the opulence of the rich.
“It’s not for nothing that young people like it so much, sums up Chloé Savoie-Bernard. In a reading evening, Carole can tell you that at such a time, this happened here, but she remains above all open to what could happen in the present. »
The double program of the slain woman
carol david
Red Herbs
104 pages