I just came back from three weeks in France. I did a translation residency in Arles, took part in a poetry evening in Lyon, attended a reading at the Villa Gillet, where Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Laura Vazquez gave a poetry lesson to the assembly hanging on their verses , saw an invigorating open microphone in Paris, where I was invited by the lively Stéphanie Vovor: a young author whose work will have to be followed with attention.
I first left Toronto, nine hours by train to spend a night in Quebec where I had the joy of participating in a book club where the poet Valérie Forgues had put my latest book, Saint Chloe of love, in the program. I felt like crying, like sometimes, having the impression that people were able to see, really see, what I had wanted to convey. I never really know who I’m talking to when I write, and somehow I’m always surprised that ” readers »can receive me. Because the world seems narrow, violent to me, the generosity of the gaze of some really carries me.
The next day, I flew to Montreal, then from Montreal to Paris, then from Paris to Marseilles, where I boarded a train to arrive in Arles. I only left with a backpack and a small suitcase, so as not to have to drag too heavy from place to place. My girlfriend, knowing my love of flea markets and clothes, asked me before leaving if I was going to be able to resist the boutiques of Paris: how would all that fit into my suitcase? I was going to have to be good; I was not.
I pretty much resisted the second-hand clothes, but came back to Toronto with a good twenty new books, sitting down with all my weight on my suitcase to manage to zip it up. I reported Vanitiesby Marie de Quatrebarbes, the new Françoise Vergès, thinking he hadn’t arrived on this side of the ocean yet (I was wrong), selfie. How capitalism controls our livesby Jennifer Padjemi, and many others, and also a mysterious book, which I hadn’t heard of, bought at the Actes Sud bookshop in Arles, ordinary lettersby Adrianna Wallis and Arlette Farge.
Adrianna Wallis, a visual and performance artist, managed to obtain boxes and letterboxes from the French post office whose recipients could never be traced. In her book, she copies, while preserving the anonymity of whoever wrote them, letters from women in rehab to their children, letters to dead stars, erotic words; a letter where someone has copied the word “alone” over an entire page.
Describing her artistic process, questioning the ethics behind her practice, she thus offers us access to these letters with various calligraphies – sometimes illegible – which contain distress, anger, love. It’s fascinating, and this book accompanied my small melancholy of a woman who travels alone.
One day, while waiting for the train in Lyon, I found a post office where I could send a card. I franked it, I, like every time I send a letter to someone, blew my affection on the paper, and I thought a little more about all the hands that will ensure that this letter will find well the person to whom I addressed it, she whom I love and who, I know, always manages to read me.