Seizing: Places

Helene Dorion, Hélène Dorion, Patrick McGuinness

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781906570125
• eBook ISBN: 9781908376541
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Patrick McGuinness was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for this translation.Together with her fiction, essays and livres d'artistes, Hélène Dorion's poetry constitutes one of modern Québécois literature's foremost achievements. Seizing: Places ( Ravir: Les Lieux ) was awarded the Prix Mallarmé in 2005, the first time that a Canadian had won this prestigious prize. Comprising five sequences, it is arguably Hélène Dorion's most ambitious work to date.With an Introduction by Carcanet poet and Booker-longlisted novelist Patrick McGuinness.

"My feeling is, the poems are grounded, and because of this they hold on to truthfulness in the moment, are in the everyday real and do open the reader (this reader anyway) to an adventure well out of the ordinary, and it says a lot to me about these poems that I want to quote all of them, to say 'listen' to this and to this and this."
David Hart, Stride Hélène Dorion was born in 1958 in Québec City, and now lives in Montréal. She is the winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry, and numerous other prizes, the most recent of which was the Prix Senghor in 2011. Patrick McGuinness is the author of two poetry collections published by Carcanet – Jilted City (2010) and The Canals of Mars (2004) – and the Man Booker Prize-longlisted and Costa-shortlisted novel The Last Hundred Days (Seren, 2011). In 2009 he was made Chevalier des Palmes académiques for services to French culture, and in 2011 Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

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V

SEIZING : FACES

RAVIR : LES VISAGES

¶

La poésie est comme un coup porté au monde par-dedans.

Valère Novarina

Soudain nos visages se couvrent de boue

s’enfoncent dans les eaux du passé.

Vers quelle rencontre allais-je

comme s’ouvre la plaie

que soupèse le temps?

Devant moi le désert

déployait des sillons de sable. Plus loin

le vent s’enroulait aux rouages

fragiles du ciel. Mon ombre

longeait cette frontière de poussière

qui ne vient de nul puits

et ne mène vers nul souffle.

Le brouillard peu à peu s’était levé.

Tout est passager: nous avons oublié la possibilité de nous arrêter et de regarder.

Roberto Juarroz

¶

Poetry is like a blow struck at the world from the inside.

Valère Novarina

Suddenly our faces are covered in mud

plunge into the waters of the past.

What meeting was I going to

the way a wound opens

weighed by time?

The desert spread its furrows

of sand before me. Further on

the wind twisted around the sky’s

delicate clockwork. My shadow

crept along the dust frontier

that comes from no well

and leads to no breath.

The fog little by little had lifted.

All is fleeting: we have forgotten how to stop and look.

Roberto Juarroz

¶

Par-dessus la colline, un nuage

rougi s’agrippe à cette heure

où se pose l’âme

– et se dissipe.

Comme en moi-même, j’entre

dans le cœur fissuré du crépuscule.

Entre mes mains, de terre et d’eau

son visage secoue des chemins de feu

– mondes frêles que ses lèvres

à peine effleurent.

Lentement ses paupières

mâchonnent mon visage

– peut-être mon âme

dans sa bouche est-elle à nouveau

en train de se faire

et de se défaire.

Émerveillée, je regarde

par la serrure du monde

j’ouvre les yeux, j’ouvre la main

comme si j’avais été invitée

à cueillir la r...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• I RAVIR: LES VILLES / SEIZING: CITIES
• II RAVIR: LES OMBRES / SEIZING: SHADOWS
• III RAVIR: LES MIROIRS / SEIZING: MIRRORS
• IV RAVIR: LES FENÊTRES / SEIZING: WINDOWS
• V RAVIR: LES VISAGES / SEIZING: FACES
• Biographical Notes