Pascale Bérubé | Woman of the future

Pascale Bérubé has published texts in collectives – such as Poverty (Triptych, 2021) and Zodiac (La wick, 2019) – poems in the magazine Estuary and on Facebook, a fertile ground for experimentation. Too much Pascale is his first solo book, a surprising poetic coming into the world in the Queer Collection of Triptyque.

Writing has tempted Pascale Bérubé since she read Élise Turcotte’s books a few years ago (The sound of living things) and Karoline Georges (Ataraxia). But it was following a writing residency in 2019 that “her” book – she prefers this uncontrolled name which thwarts the codes – gradually emerged.

“I wrote 40 pages that I reworked in order to find the right literary style and a homogeneity that transcends what I do on Facebook. This social network is like a second skin for me. The virtual feeds me, but it has limits. »

The title of his publication imposed itself in residence during an exercise taking the form of a closed session.

” THE too title is the hyperpresence of women entering and leaving me. This refers to reflections and mimicry. »

Her interest in femininity, the visual arts and the image dominates in her work, as do the themes of self-esteem, the gaze of others and emotions on edge. Fascinated by performance artist Marina Abramović, Pascale Bérubé has made her body an artistic tool.

“Instinctively, I felt this need to physically settle into a practice. The body remains connected to the writing because I believe that everything before a poem is a performance. If there were no body or presence in the world, there would be no text. »

Nelly Arcan

The proximity to the work of Nelly Arcan is also undeniable. It is about the concepts of appearance versus those of intellect, beauty and ugliness.

“I find myself there in the refusal that we oppose to women who do not fit into the mould. In my book, I’m not judgmental about beauty or our perception of it. I live this questioning every day. What lives in me is to define myself by myself without being accountable to anyone. »

She denounces in this sense the very negative reactions expressed recently in the face of the “new” Madonna, as if the singer belonged to everyone except herself.

“We are trying to lock women into a very narrow corridor. Why can’t a woman shave her eyebrows and head to explore and present herself as a blank canvas? It’s nice to see a woman of her age experimenting and creating. Women have the right to exist in their own eyes, no offense to some men. So much the better if the younger generations can emancipate themselves in this way. »

In everything she lets emerge by writing, Pascale is Pascale, but not too much, nor all the time. Its “I” writing can prove to be misleading, and this, on purpose. The author likes to maintain a distance from her “character”, even if one has the impression of having access to her personal life by reading her.

“I am surely exaggerating, language is a material of exaggeration, of amplification of matter, just like cosmetic make-up or clothing, like the cry that we prefer to the murmur,” she writes.

Blurred outlines

Pascale Bérubé creates on a thin line between the likelihood of intimate revelations and the woman who would often prefer to remain anonymous.

“From a creative point of view, it’s stimulating to be the outline of something that you can’t quite distinguish. I like to say that the woman you see in my photos is an actress I hired or an artificial intelligence. »

In fact, the “I” would not exist since it remains in constant metamorphosis. What does not change are the feelings she has for her mother, who died in 2022.

“It’s a book that also belongs to my mother. All the mirrors present in the Too, it also inhabits them. These are fond memories. »

Too much Pascale however, is not a nostalgic or traumatic work. Pascale Bérubé, a woman of today and of the future, has written “a” book to speak to other women, to all women.

Not enough Pascale(s).

Too much Pascale

Pascale Berube

Triptych, queer collection

126 pages