Nicole Brossard (Canada/writes in French)
1943
Born in Montreal on November 27, 1943, Nicole Brossard is on the most noted poets and fiction writers of French-speaking Canada. Her first collection, Aube à la saison appeard in 1965. That same year she co-founded the influential literary magazine, La Barre du Jour. She has become well known for her feminist position and co-directed the film, Some American Feminists in 1976.
Over the years, Brossard has written over 28 collections of poetry along with eight novels, including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn, most of them translated also in English.
Brossard has twice won the Governor General award for her poetry in 1974 and 1984. In 1989 and 1999 she won Le Grand prix de Poesie de la Foundations les Forges, and she was awarded the Le Prix Athanase-David for a lifetime of literary schievement in 1991. In 1994 she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. In 2019 she received The America Award for a lifeteime contribution to international writing.
Besides her fiction and poetry Brossard has published numerous collections of essays and other writings.
"aube à la saison" (in Trois 12, 1965); Mordre en sa chair (Montréal: Esterel, 1966); L'écho bouge beau (Montréal: Esterel, 1968); Suite logique (Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1970); Le centre blanc (Montréal: Orphée, 1970, reprinted Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1974); Mécanique jongleuse/Masculin grammaticale (Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1974); Le partie pour le tout (Montréal: L'aurore, 1975); D'arc de cycle la dérive (Saint-Jacques-le-Mineur: Edition de la Maison, 1979); Amantes (Montréal: Les Quinze, Collection Réelles, 1980); Double impression (Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1984); L'aviva (Montréal: Nouvelle Barre du Jour, 1985); Domaine d'écriture (Montréal: Nouvelle Barre du Jour, 1985); Mauve (with Daphne Marlatt) (Montréal: NBJ, Collection Transformance, 1986); Character/Jeu de lettres (with Daphne Marlatt) (Montréal: NBJ, Collection Transformance, 1986); Installations (Trois-Rivières: Les Ecrits des Forges/Paris: Le Castor Astral, 1989); A tout regard (Montréal: NBJ/Bibliothèque Québécoise, 1989); Typhon dru (with Christine Davies) (Paris: Collectif Génération, 1990); Sa subjectivité des lionnes (Bruxelles:; L'arbre à paroles, 1990); Langues obscures (Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1992); La uit verte du parc labyrinthe (Laval: Les Editions Trois, 1992); Flesh, son(e) at promenade (Lèvres urbaines 23, 1993); Vertige de l'avant-scène (Trois-Rivières: Ecrits des Forges/Orange bleue, 1997); "Amantes," suivi de "Le sense apparent" et de "Sous la langue" (Montréal: L'Hexagone, 1998); Musée de l'os de l'eau (Saussines, France: Cadex Editions, 1999; reprinted Saint-Hippolyte: Editions du Noroît, 2008); Au présent des veines (Trois-Rivières: Ecrits des Forges; Echternach, Luxembourg: Editions Phi; Limoges: Le Bruit des Autres, 2003); Après les mots (Trois-Rivières: Ecrits des Forges, 2007); Ardeur (Echternach, Luxembourg; Editions Phi, 2008); D'aube et de civilisation: Poèmes, 1965-2007 (Montréal: Typo, 2008)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Daydream Mechanics, trans. by Larry Shouldice (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1980); Lovhers, trans. by Barbara Godard (Montréal: Guernica Press, 1986); Sans la Langue/Under tongue, bilingual ed., trans. into English by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood (Montréal: L'Essentielle; Charlottetown: Gynergy Books, 1987); Picture Theory, trans. by Barbara Godard Montréal: Guernica Press/ New York: Roof Books, 1991); Typhon dru, trans. by Carolyne Bergvall (London: Reality Press, 1997); Installations, trans. by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels (Winnipge: Gordon Shillingford Publishing, 2000); Shadow: Soft et Soif, trans. by Guy Bennett (Los Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 2003); Fluid Arguments (2005); Notebook of Roses and Civilization (trans. by Robert Majzels and Erin Moure) (2007); Fences in Breathing (2009); Aviva, trans. by Anne-Marie Wheeler (Vancouver: Nomados Press, 2008); Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard (Waterloo: Laurier Press, 2009); Nicole Brossard: Selections (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); White Piano (trans. by Robert Majzels and Erine Moure) (2013)
For Brossard's Buffalo EPC homepage, click here:
For a selection of tapes and videos, click below:
A Rod for a Hansome Price
(from her to ravish meaning ravine On the other side
artifice slumbers in the green. The shadow follows hour
by hour hollow and gloomy and which call me forth)
……………………………….grafted onto the sentence
o a long time distant to hang on my belly obscure parallel
images and tattoos age suggestive of the fingernail grazing
the thigh the valley get turned on
the body gentle with daring
drug to take away her meaning
her skin of orange and olive
her texture of assailing couple
(you underline them with a stroke
like the bed under their weight
their pleasure)
…………..and plunge down
and so body to body in the tuft
her spreading out in vegetation
right to them
the point of consent and
affirmation
little magic boxes…………….
the skin a free grammar
of silence canvas of impressions of
representation
fire: artifice a distance
the true skin strips off the vowels
illustrate
the soft sponges of the fine cob
the definite connection that exists
between ravishing meaning from her and
magic boxes
*
A ROD FOR A HANDSOME PRICE swells
(but)
since the grafts
gently the words run
along it quietly.
(from her to ravish meaning ravine On the other side
artifice slumbers in the green. The shadow follows hour
by hour hollow and gloomy and which call me forth)
……………………………….grafted onto the sentence
o a long time distant to hang on my belly obscure parallel
images and tattoos age suggestive of the fingernail grazing
the thigh the valley get turned on
the body gentle with daring
drug to take away her meaning
her skin of orange and olive
her texture of assailing couple
(you underline them with a stroke
like the bed under their weight
their pleasure)
…………..and plunge down
and so body to body in the tuft
her spreading out in vegetation
right to them
the point of consent and
affirmation
little magic boxes…………….
the skin a free grammar
of silence canvas of impressions of
representation
fire: artifice a distance
the true skin strips off the vowels
illustrate
the soft sponges of the fine cob
the definite connection that exists
between ravishing meaning from her and
magic boxes
*
A ROD FOR A HANDSOME PRICE swells
(but)
since the grafts
gently the words run
along it quietly.