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We love poetry here at Laurier Press and publish a bunch of books to prove it. Here’s a selection from Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard, selected with an introduction by Louise H. Forsyth. The poems in this book are presented in their original French along with English versions, some previously translated, some newly translated for this volume by Louise Forsyth.

Installation

chaque matin je m’intéresse à la vie
de grands détours et des preuves
au cœur de la langue des pans de siècle
icônes, soies, souvent manuscrits
le corps impair des femmes
les grands séismes
de loin ça se voit
je m’installe dans mon corps
de manière à pouvoir bouger
quand une femme me fait signe

Installation

every morning I take an interest in life
huge detours and proofs
the tail ends of century at the heart of language
icons, silks, often manuscripts
the odd-numbered body of women
great quakes
visible from afar
I settle into my body’s installation
so as to be able to respond
when a woman gives me a sign

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Correlata for a Cryptogram

It looks like California outside
the mudslides of pure mascara
but it’s been said before:
you can’t give an inch a new nail.

Curious, however,
the return to the mystic writing pad
for just the briefest scribble
of top-right Celtomania.

Around these parts
simultaneity in claws is
the puma’s best form of disappearance
just follow the arrow from the national diagonals
to reach the correlata for a cyrptogram
around the throat of America

the way milk escapes the entire history
of its blackness.

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(sentenced)

is not
the string
of words
a sentence

is not
the voice
comes out
another’s

is not
the thought
complete
before it

speak
is not
the mind
a knotted

string not
words that
only seem
not meant

to mean
or sent
not strung
to end

but tied
to cradle
each
to each

Fred Wah
Originally from Sentenced to Light (Talonbooks, 2008)

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Next week WLU Press will have a booth at Word on the Street in Kitchener. That’s always a good day. I’m torn between wanting to be part of the big Toronto festival and thoroughly enjoying interacting with our smaller community in beautiful Victoria Park.

We recently exhibited our books at the American Political Science Association conference in Toronto, and coming up we will be attending, for both sales and acquisitions, the American Association for Religion conference in Montreal and the annual conference for the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS) in San Diego. No, I am not lucky enough to be sent to San Diego in November, more’s the pity. That one goes to the boss.

Be sure to check out our new releases below and ask your favourite independent bookstore to stock them if they haven’t already.

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An interesting thing happened the other day when I posted about the alternate (subject)  index in Open Wide a Wilderness. I also “tweeted” about it on Twitter, which then got picked up in a short conversation among indexers, who were glad to hear about the index itself and also that users were finding it useful. That’s one of the neat things about this social media stuff. I would not have reached that group of people typically, and I’m not even sure how I did, but it was great to make the connection.

Mansions

Aroused in deepest mansions of the night
trout change their skin inside a speckled chamber
before they levitate above the iridescent vapour;
and singing as though it were a lunar highball
my soul absorbs a little ether out in orbit.

A riffle bubbles, “Isn’t every fish a visiting star?”
Afraid, I pour some wicked moonlight down the hatch:
a woman leers back at me from Heaven…
Entangled in my net, a daughter of the river shimmies
flouncing in a silver nightgown; she’s finally my bride.

Joe Rosenblatt
(1983)

Reprinted in Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, edited by Nancy Holmes, with an introduction by Don McKay. Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in the Environmental Humanities series.

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The following poem from Di Brandt appears in Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt, selected with an introduction by Tanis MacDonald. MacDonald opens her introduction to this volume in this way:

The importance of Di Brandt’s poetry to Canadian Literature cannot be over-estimated. Her work broaches complex and volatile subject matter, and is valued for her assertion that poetry must be, at its core, concerned with the political power of language. Acclaimed for her lyric sensibility and rebellious inquiry into the power of language, Brandt explores cross-cultural concepts of justice and the ecopoetic relationship between land and spirituality.

❉

let me tell you, dear reader,
about the time

my body was a ship. & i
sailed the seas

of downtown Toronto in it,
sails billowing,

full of wind, spirit breath,
baby’s breath.

& the young men on Bloor
averted their eyes

& the Portuguese construction
workers on Huron Street

whistled through their teeth
& grunted,

ah, now, there’s a mama.

& the young women in the park
coming suddenly into view,

with their strollers on the green
grass, & i sailing

down the sidewalks past them,
glorious in my pride.

ah, dear reader, let me tell you
how i loved my body then,

my huge floating belly, my nipples
big, dark, swollen

with milk, leading desire,
golden, liquid,

all over the bed & the pillow
& the floor.

ah, how i loved my lover then,
who filled me with such bounty.

erotic trembling, oceanic bliss.

smacking, sucking, stroking
my sunlit prow, big with child.

it was then, dear reader,
my brain sank into my womb,

dark lipped, bearded, dripping:
with child, with child, with child.

such a grand billowing
on the high seas, such unfurling,

such a mighty flowering among
the busy streets,

expecting, pregnant.

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