On the Line

Notes from a Factory

Joseph Ponthus, Stephanie Smee

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781760642334
• eBook ISBN: 9781743821435
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Factory you shall never have my soul

I am here

And I count for so much more than you

And I count so much more because of you

Thanks to you

Unable to find work in his field, Joseph Ponthus enlists with a temp agency and starts to pick up casual shifts in the fish processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Day after day he records with infinite precision the nature of work on the production line: the noise, the weariness, the dreams stolen by the repetitive nature of exhausting rituals and physical suffering. But he finds solace in a life previously lived. Shelling prawns, he dreams of Alexandre Dumas. Pushing cattle carcasses, he recalls Apollinaire. And, in the grace of the blank spaces created by his insistent return to a new line of text – mirroring his continued return to the production line – we discover the woman he loves, the happiness of a Sunday, Pok Pok the dog, the smell of the sea. In this celebrated French bestseller, translated by Stephanie Smee, Ponthus captures the mundane, the beautiful and the strange, writing with an elegance and humour that sit in poignant contrast with the blood and sweat of the factory floor. On the Line (À la ligne) is a poet's ode to manual labour, and to the human spirit that makes it bearable.

PART ONE

‘It is fantastic what one can endure.’

Guillaume Apollinaire

(letter to Madeleine Pagès, 30 November 1915)

1.

Entering the factory

Of course I was ready for

The stench

The cold

The shifting of heavy loads

The harshness of it all

The conditions

The production line

The modern slavery

I wasn’t there to report on it

Nor was I readying myself for the revolution

No

The factory means I get to earn a buck

Put food on the table

As the saying goes

Because my wife is sick of seeing me lounge around

on the couch waiting for a job in my field

So it’s

The agro-industrial plant for me

Food processing

The agro industry

As they say

A factory in Brittany

Handling processing cooking and all things fish

and prawns

I’m not there to write

I’m there for the money

At the temp agency they ask me when I can start

I pull out the Victor Hugo

My usual literary go-to

Tried and tested

‘Tomorrow at dawn when the countryside pales I guess’

They take me at my word and the next day I clock on at

six in the morning

As the hours and days go by the need to write embeds

itself like a bone in my throat I can’t dislodge

But not of the grimness of the factory

Rather its paradoxical beauty

On my production line I often find myself thinking of a

parable

One of Claudel’s I’m pretty sure

A man makes a pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres and

comes across a fellow busy breaking stones

What are you doing

My job

Breaking these shitty rocks

My back’s done in

It’s a dog’s job

Shouldn’t be allowed

Would sooner die

Some kilometres further on a second fellow’s busy

doing the same job

Same question

I’m working

I’ve got a family to feed

It’s a bit tough

That’s just how it is and at least I’ve got a job

That’s the main thing

Further on still

Outside Chartres

A third man

His face radiant

What are you doing

I’m building a cathedral

May the prawns and fish be my stones

At first the smell of the factory irritated my nostrils

Now I no longer notice it

The cold is bearable with a big jumper a hoodie two

decent pairs of socks and leggings under my pants

Shifting the heavy loads

I’m finding muscles I didn’t know existed

I am willing in my servitude

Happy almost

The factory has taken me

I refer to it now only as

My factory

As if I had some form of ownership of the machines

or proprietary interest in the processing of the prawns

and fish

Small-time casual worker that I am

One among so many others

Soon

We’ll be processing shellfish too

Crabs lobsters spider crabs and crayfish

That’s a revolution I’m hoping to see

Hoping to bag some claws even if I already know it

won’t be possible

It’s bad enough trying to filch just a single prawn

You’ve really got to hide if you want to eat a few

I’m still too obvious my co-worker Brigitte

an older woman has said to me

‘I didn’t see anything but watch it if the bosses catch

you’

So now I sneak them out under my apron with my hands

triple gloved to keep out the moisture the cold and

everything else so I can peel and eat what I consider at

the very least to be some form of payment in kind

I’m getting ahead of myself

Back to the writing

‘I write as I speak when the fiery angel of conversation

takes hold of me like a prophet’ wrote Barbey

d’Aurevilly or something along those lines somewhere

I’m not quite sure where

I write like I think when I’m on my production line

Mind wandering alone determined

I write like I work

On the production line

Return

New line

Clocking on

It’s just an endle...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part One
• Part Two
• Back Cover