Explore your passions
Here is a gift, a book of readings that takes us to the land of learning, of fundamental inscriptions during the first emotions that words inscribed in us. Here is a collection in free verse around these everlasting titles which marked childhood and the ages that follow. The presentation text begins with this reflection: “At the start, a revelation: we become what we read. ” Which truth ! From Woolf to Rimbaud, from Kafka to Beauvoir, of whom she said: “I carry my Beauvoir like a standard”, from Blais to Amyot, wide is the gulf of shadow and light which pours here with an avowed love, a fidelity almost exhilarated. “I read, I read”, says the book, “I, concave girl with distorted eyesight in her habitat / Freedom-loving […] » In fact, this type of literary exercise is akin to a scriptural autobiography, a line of life that the line of words traces from one reading to another, scarifying the soul, the desire to live, to go further. far in knowledge. This collection, written in always accurate language, challenges our own readings and convinces.
Hugues Corriveau
Prodigious visions Journey of a reader
★★
Nicole Richard, Le Noroît, Montreal, 2024, 112 pages
Advancing in age
The author ofKneeling in your mouths (The Gutter Wolf, 1999) and Walking barefoot on our disappearances (David, 2012) arrives at the height of consciousness, in this singular moment of taking stock. In Right in the sky a very lively emotion blossoms from this devastating time. “You wander among the disappearances / the cemetery bouquets / hanging on your shoulders”, asserts the first poem, as if echoing the 2012 collection. It must be said that this collection, although not very joyful, gives pride of place to the the intimate passion of a life on the run, because “aging completes the crossing / keeps the child / in a photo album”. The program promises to be arduous in the future of things and sometimes seems overwhelming: “you have a very small / handful of winds left / it’s in the order of blood / you will have to pick up your life / cut the strings.” » There was the flesh and the loves, “like a corset / desire lay purple / against your ribs”, and this is how the poet makes her tenderness heard.
Hugues Corriveau
On the sky, a slower crossing
★★★ 1/2
Lyne Richard, Hammock, Montreal, 2024, 72 pages
Mass and species killings
In Marcel Labine’s latest collection, As if it were like that, a threat lurks on every page. First there is the one at the beginning, where we meet “young men / surly painted / ivory black / consumed to the point of soot / of their own bones”. Then, fear gives way to horror in the “three documentary poems”, which dive into the heart of mass killings in the United States. The poet, to whom we owe, among other things, the works Nothing was missing in the world (2021) and Common good (2018), takes us into the darkest corners of humanity. With his skillful and disconcerting pen, he raises the existence of another murderous madness which is currently shaking the planet: that which causes the loss of biodiversity. “As it is now we do not know / if the state of the globe is irreparable / if it has not become a giant wasteland / where fauna / and irradiated reeds pile up for centuries in the darkness. »
Florence Morin-Martel
As if it were like that
★★★ 1/2
Marcel Labine, Les Herbes rouge, Montreal, 2024, 120 pages
The memory of the seasons
Black winter. White winter. White spring. Black spring. In Roseline Lambert’s third collection of poetry, black lake, the seasons pass between snow and darkness, leaving no room for colors. Between Finland, Sweden, Albania, Montenegro and Quebec, the narrator seeks her bearings through the geographical coordinates which become entangled throughout the book. Filled with anguish, she clings to her ancestor’s voice to find her way. “Her arms open in the swamp / my grandmother shudders take a single sip / rose does not sink into oblivion white / weaves the pages one by one does not tangle / the weft take the ticket at the station file far / stagnant waters inspire the glow. » In her work dotted with images, the poet and anthropologist evokes with sensitivity and finesse the theme of memory, but also that of the wounds that we carry around like baggage. “And the surface returns I choke I spit out / I scream they catch me they save me / the wind returns I run out of breath / a striped beam of lights blinds me / I taste my cuts / made with the pieces of your face. »
Florence Morin-Martel
Black Lake
★★★ 1/2
Roseline Lambert, La Peuplade, Saguenay, 2024, 144 pages