Awarded for the first time since 2017, the Gilles-Corbeil Prize of the Émile-Nelligan Foundation, endowed with a $100,000 scholarship, celebrates this year the exceptional career of Nicole Brossard, poet, novelist, essayist, anthologist, co-director, theorist, editor and activist.
“It’s moving,” she told The Press during a telephone interview. An honor which, to a certain extent, testifies to belonging to a literature, to a history and to privileged links with other writers. »
By receiving this triennial award, the 2020 award of which had to be postponed to this year due to the pandemic, Nicole Brossard joins Anne Hébert, Réjean Ducharme, Marie-Claire Blais and Michel Tremblay among the fine flower of Quebec literature.
The president of the jury, Jean-François Nadeau, rightly underlined the constancy and energy of this work translated into several languages.
“Nicole Brossard’s quality of both thoughtful and passionate writing has not been denied for more than half a century. She entered literature in the 1960s. She never left it. And she never deviated from it. [Son œuvre] testifies to a desire for meetings, exchanges, interactions placed under the sign of the universal, of fraternity, of humanity. “, did he declare.
The prize jury was also made up of Martine Audet (poet), David Bélanger (critic and professor), Mathieu Bélisle (essayist and professor) and Marie-Pascale Huglo (author and professor).
Co-founder of the journal The bar of the day, Nicole Brossard has never ceased to be involved in the literary world. Her career has been marked by her activism for feminist and LGBTQ+ causes. A member of the Académie des lettres du Québec, she has received several prestigious titles, including those awarded by the Orders of Quebec, Canada and the Pléiade.
Always write
His most recent collection of poetry, nail polish, accompanied by sound paintings by Symon Henry, was published last April at Noroît. The many honors that have covered his immense literary career do not prevent him from being this “consciousness that writes”.
“I am a woman of questions. They arise more and more in the contemporary world. There is never a respite either to try to answer them, or to ask new ones while being sorry when they are too difficult. »
Concerns about time and memory exist even more insistent these days, she believes.
“I always come back to the question of meaning and nonsense which arose for the first time with feminist consciousness and which arises again with the digital transformation which truly affects us in our relationship to time and to the body. We can pretend nothing, but quite honestly, it’s impossible to do so in the face of the future of the species as such. »
His aesthetic approach, it should be added, has also always been at the center of his writing.
I write with a passion for process and enigma. That’s what keeps me a little more lively. I get along very well with these puzzles, sometimes very simple, which make me vibrate with all being.
Nicole Brossard
Words will always have a light in his eyes, words that must be kept within and around oneself in order to experience a certain joy.
“Consciousness work gives pleasure. These two truths are rarely associated, yet the awareness of certain elements gives pleasure even when it comes to detestable realities. The mere fact of thinking of being able to understand them ensures a certain well-being. »
great honor
The Gilles-Corbeil Prize remains one of the most important, if not the most important distinction, in Quebec literature. It was awarded, for the first time, in 1990, to Réjean Ducharme and, subsequently, to Anne Hébert (1993), Jacques Brault (1996), Paul-Marie Lapointe (1999), Fernand Ouellette (2002), Marie -Claire Blais (2005), Jacques Poulin (2008), Victor-Lévy Beaulieu (2011) and Michel Tremblay 2017).
The Émile-Nelligan Foundation was created in 1979 at the instigation of the poet’s nephew, Gilles Corbeil, with a view to honoring Nelligan’s memory and helping the arts and letters. Mr. Corbeil and the other heirs of Nelligan agreed to establish this foundation and to cede to it the accumulated copyright of the poet.
To date, it has awarded more than $1.6 million to 75 local winners working in the fields of literature (Gilles-Corbeil and Émile-Nelligan awards), visual arts (Ozias-Leduc awards) and contemporary music (Serge-Garant prize).