Direct to the heart
Coming from the world of fanzines, where she has signed some works under the pseudonym Nina Shulman, Juliette Langevin, under the influence of Nelly Arcan and Josée Yvon, offers Mean girl, a daring, disturbing work: “I know that reading it makes me violent”. But a great fragility is also revealed. The two aspects coexist there, surrounding the “I” as if blinded by love, so extreme is its need for tenderness: “I sold many things for love, first my dignity then the least of my thoughts”. Unvarnished, eater of life, borderline personality, she admits: “I am vulgar, I am an easy girl”, “I am one of the girls who have always wanted to sell themselves. » This radicality sets the tone for this collection open to distress. In addition to the aura of an exacerbated sexuality, the author highlights the use of powerful drugs, and achieves the feat of giving a coherent tone to what is much other than a provocation. “Poetry is like love juice, my writing is more comfortable being described like that. » Intense book in free verse and prose which marks the arrival of an author, sister at heart of Marjolaine Beauchamp.
Hugues Corriveau
Mean girl
★★★★
Juliette Langevin, The Goose of Cravan, coll. “Tantôt”, Montreal, 2023, 140 pages
Live in poetry
The elegance of writing is constant with Pierre Morency who loves everything, one would like to say, but above all life and listening to the quiet rustle of nature. His latest collection, Morning, where are you?, is benevolent, in unison with the previous work which never ceases to convince us of its greatness. In his first poem, to the question “Where are you from?” », he replies: “I come from my last writing. » We could not say it better, better open this journey of prose and free verse which, in this unique language, full of an often rare vocabulary, put into the mouth with delight, unfolds in kindness. Doesn’t he title the second part “Brief remarks on the pleasure of living”? A hunter of meaning, he knows “that soon this beautiful animal of the human spirit that we call a sentence will breathe on the surface. » As for the sophisticated vocabulary that he likes to deploy, does he not say to the reader about trees: “Remember the words treetop, marmenteau, liber, sapwood. They have been refined so that you come from the flavor of the lyrics. » Beautiful collection which always opens the dark or luminous heart of poetry.
Hugues Corriveau
Morning, where are you?
★★★★
Pierre Morency, Boréal, Montreal, 2023, 184 pages
The flames will find the hay
Pubertynew collection by Annie Lafleur, closes a writing cycle started by Rosebud, Harelip And Hemlock. Celebrated and crowned titles, their laurels apparently did not make the poet want to sit down, but rather to sing at the top of her lungs, “galloping cicada in the burnt wind”. Seizing her memories with all the senses, she goes through puberty with two friends, united in this whirlwind of cruelty, enjoyment and revolt. Everything is exponential, from the feelings that inhabit them to the settings that stage them, even this language, perverse, rebellious and generous, carried by a breath of drunkenness, but straight, even sharp, which invites itself to the rhythm furious with a relentless freedom: “still sings when there is no more oxygen / when the sun has baked the whole sky, which has become stiff. » Sometimes you have to accept getting lost, but the darkness never lasts, and the path finds its bearings, marked by “the star that I had not yet seen / the one that shows its vulva to the moon”.
Yannick Marcoux
Puberty
★★★ 1/2
Annie Lafleur, Le Quartanier, Montreal, 2023, 144 pages
Poetry of a gentle drift
Dominic Marcil signed a few titles with Hector Ruiz, which reflected, in particular, his interest in geopoetics. His first solo collection, Voice-over prophecy, does not deviate from its path, embodying poetry imbued with an active and vibrant setting. If the first part is more the story of a romantic commotion, the second is a stroll where the city ties its beat to that of the poet. The proposition is sometimes heard, but there is an immanent play in the writing, of this playful humor making “Lamartine en paddleboard » in this way of disorienting semantic logic, which brings out refreshing images: “No answer / the dryer turns and turns / the evidence loses its humidity”. A collection which will not go down in history, but which, through its linguistic discoveries and its sensitive amalgamation of the sacred and the trivial, constitutes a certain reading pleasure: “I shift to neutral / the engine is still running / the cry of the gulls merges / with the beginning of the extended line.
Yannick Marcoux
Voice-over prophecy
★★★
Dominic Marcil, The lizard in love, Montreal, 2023, 74 pages