hold the lighthouse
Born in Cairo, and whose origins are Greek-Lebanese and Franco-Georgian, Nora Atalla has lived in Quebec since her childhood. Between the walled-in people and the others, outside, there are few relations, except the pleas for freedom and light: “we are questioning the inexplicable / begging for pity” while all that remains is to “dream / knees wedged in the earth / for touch the silence / stones and prayers”. Seemingly desperate, this poetry never ceases to claim, because “healing depends on the severity of the fractures”. The poet takes up her theme of stones that obstruct freedom. It is an obsessive image in this poetry of denunciation. It is doubtless necessary that vigilant voices still be raised when the hour is with horror, that the massacres continue, “if the impermeability of the stone persists / poetry will die with nature”. An indignant voice is raised, and that in itself is a feat. Still, the question posed in his penultimate collection, Dead, up!, is always of formidable relevance: “how in the stones / to sculpt doves? »
Hugues Corriveau
The revolt of the stones
★★★ 1/2
Nora Atalla, Writings from the Forges, Trois-Rivières, 2022, 112 pages
dance with words
“Readable and unreadable”, says Frédéric Dumont in his preface about the poems of Marcel Hébert. “Playful” is the key word of this language: “The aviary is a bird / of billions of heads”. The complete work of Marcel Hébert is contained in four titles, of which, without a doubt, the most important is The man who watched the books go by, published in 1984. The protagonist of these texts has a fascination for the walls that circumscribe his universe. Is it interesting to know that the author never left the island of Montreal during his life? If he found himself dreaming, “he opened the suitcase, it was beautiful”, and the gesture alone signaled an escape: “leaning over / he shakes his head with an alcoholic air / touches the crumpled wall / it was as beautiful as any other day”. In a previous poem, he had specified that “once he pushed the chamber wanting to destroy it / perhaps for fear of another day”. This ontological concern is the strength of these texts carried by surprise, the strange ability to say without saying, to be on the sidelines of things. This short book is signed by one of the great publishers that Quebec has known, co-founder of Les Herbes rouges
Hugues Corriveau
grasshopper in toy
★★★ 1/2
Marcel Hébert, Red Herbs, “Enthusiasm”, Montreal, 2022, 104 pages
Fracture and suture
In his most recent collection published by Triptyque, Truce, Louise Marois explores plural realities and tries to create sometimes dialogues, sometimes ruptures between her jumbled memories. Most of the time, two poems, shorter than usual, are on each page: certain words here constitute anchor points with a reference in a footnote to another idea, downright new prose. “Dépanneur”, “me”, “go for it”, “tragedy”: any word can be a gateway to a new part of one’s memory. The book, divided into chapters named for the most part using portmanteau words, also leaves room for two short stories with torn characters. Even within the themes, there are many dualities with life and death, family and lover, pain and sexuality. The author leaves nothing to chance – or everything – so that her entire work is plural in each of its senses, thus creating a complete and complex collection as well as abstract.
Maïka Yargeau
Truce
★★★ 1/2
Louise Marois, Triptych, Montreal, 2022, 181 pages
According to the seasons
Situated between summer and autumn, but also between pain and death, Louise Bombardier’s collection In the green lap of summer gently unfolds a brutal poetry: “A woman never stops / dying. / First sex of slaughterhouses”. Or again: “I went through my youth / torn between rape and the angel, / until I met / with a gentleman. / There weren’t tons of them”. To each poem its sad day. From 1er June to August 24, without fail, every day is there. Then comes the autumn and with it the inconstancy of the writings which spread out among some oversights of the 1er September to October 23. As the leaves change and fall, the pain lingers from poem to poem: death lurks nearby. “Where have my friends gone? / Who wants to play with me / in the rubble / of my starry memory? The book clings to anyone who recognizes themselves in it, women first. “An old muse, / that does not exist. / She is still / young and beautiful, / the muse. / This is the doll / of the ogres. A poignant collection, crying out with truths so painful that we normally prefer to keep them quiet.
Maïka Yargeau
In the green lap of summer
★★★★
Louise Bombardier, Poets of the bush, Montreal, 2022, 146 pages