I often think of the writer Anne-Marie Alonzo. Born in Egypt in 1951, having immigrated as a child with her family to Quebec, she suffered a car accident as a teenager that left her paraplegic.
She has published collections of poetry, correspondence, novels: about fifteen books in all. On the accident, on the dance, on love: few writers know how to name the burn of it in such a dense way, she who writes to the beloved: the ages between us are exhausted between us the world and hours abolished. His writing, sometimes learned, sometimes syncopated, always lyrical and playful, is inimitable. She was a friend of the great poet Denise Desautels, with whom she co-signed letters to Cassandra, Margie Gillis and Hélène Cixous. I would even say that friendship was at the heart of her practice, both in her books, which explore relationability, and in her cultural work, where she sought to cultivate contacts, to multiply ties: Alonzo founded a house of edition and a magazine of the same name, Trois, a festival of living arts in Laval, all spaces where art was also a pretext for encounters. She died in 2005. Her books are now long out of print, the festival no longer exists, nor does her publishing house.
I started reading it when I was, I think, in my early twenties. I no longer remember the exact perimeters of my encounter with his work: I must have come across his books by chance in second-hand bookstores. I do know, however, that ever since I read her, her books have stuck with me. I moved them from apartment to apartment, preciously, I taught them when I had the opportunity.
While literary history likes above all to find “forgotten” figures of the past to put them back in the spotlight, I wonder why no one has yet reissued his books, of which little has been said since his death. He has had a few events: a performance on his work by the poets Virginie Fauve and Nelly Desmarais, in a park that bears his name, in Laval, in 2021, some recent articles in the publication Between you. For such a vast body of work, it is all in all very little. I wonder why Alonzo was never part of any lesson plan of classes I attended, from my baccalaureate to my doctorate. Why my friends and I exchanged her collections with the impression of having in hand jewels that no one cared about except us.
Sometimes I have spoken of her to people who, without my knowing it, had known her. Each time, I saw their eyes light up and each time, I was told anecdotes about her, telling me how charming it was to have her as an ally, as a friend. Alonzo was clever, brilliant, eager to learn, to know—she had a doctorate on the work of Colette. About thirty years apart, we had worn out the same benches at the University of Montreal. She loved beautiful clothes, shows. I am sad not to have been able to count myself among her friends, but I am using the space of fiction here to imagine the pleasure we would have had, I firmly believe, sharing a cup of tea and to chatter, to talk about books, dreams, a vision of literature that knows how to make room for generosity and concern for others. I continue to nurture the hope that we will talk more and better about her, her work, her unique and precious career, which has so much to teach the contemporary.