The third collection by Chloé Savoie-Bernard is the culmination of a personal and rigorous work begun in Scotch Tape Kingdom (2015) and Splendor (2018). The author magnificently masters the language and the images of a mighty wind bringing her even further, this time placing her at the intersection of love and the divine.
We feel that the poet is touching here the confidence that allows her to soar. Vulnerability, corporeality, sexuality, injuries and torments are always on the menu, but there is also an elevation of the spirit. She admits that she has seen others; she now knows that ruins can hide a joy. This leads her to emerge from the “tender pink” somewhere where she loses both “her courtesy and her artifices”.
The worms gain momentum, color… verb! The poet seems aware of having carried a cross for a long time and is preparing to lay it down with the apprehensions and violence suffered. She doesn’t even have to forgive everything, as we see a smirk appear in her face which distances itself from the melancholy.
She can celebrate being a woman despite bitterness or loneliness. Between sacrifice and its absence, she continues her journey beyond obstacles and discouragement, despite “the pain around the neck instead of the caress”.
Certainly, his joy can be a “thorn between two vertebrae”; his anger rubs shoulders with desire. The fragility remains whole, clearly visible, but the poet dominates it more than ever. Calm and hers, Saint Chloe is tied to love!
Saint Chloe of love
Chloe Savoie-Bernard
The hexagon
112 pages