[ô mer épuisée]
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- [ô mer épuisée]*
ô mer épuiséeil étend le Nord sur le videil suspend la terre sur le néantest-ce le Nord qui me sauveradisent-elles des îlesoù les femmes à peau ocre se nourrissent de glacede très belles Noires sentant la sueury passentdans une rumeur d’algues raresleur corps opaque leurs membres longsréfugiés à bord des caïquesleurs pieds nus cherchent des visagessous l’eau translucidede la mer si parfaitement la même [End Page 12]
- [oh exhausted sea]
oh exhausted seait extends its North over the voidit suspends the land over nothingnessis this the North that will save meask the isleswhen women with ochre skin feed on icebeautiful Blacks perfumed in sweatpass byin a murmur of rare algaetheir bodies opaque their limbs slenderstowed away aboard caïquestheir bare feet seek facesbeneath the translucid waterof the sea so precisely the same [End Page 13]
Joël Des Rosiers, born in Haiti, is a poet and psychiatrist in Quebec, where he has lived since he was ten years old. His books of poems include Métropolis Opéra, Tribu (finalist of the Prix du Gouverneur general), Savanes (winner of Prix d’excellence de Laval), Vétiver, Caïques, and Gaïac. Winner of the Grand Prix of Montreal Book and the Grand Prix of International Poetry Festival, Vétiver has been translated into English by Hug Haelton and published in 2005 by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, and won the Governor General’s Award. In 2011, his literary publications garnered for him the Prix Athamase-David, Quebec’s most prestigious literary prize. His Théories Caraïbes, Poétique du déracinement, a critical monograph, was revised in 2009 and awarded the Prix de la Société des écrivains canadiens.
Carrol F. Coates, Professor Emeritus of French, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics at Binghamton University (SUNY), has published a number of translations of Caribbean and African literature, including General Sun, My Brother (Jacques Stephen Alexis) and Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (Ahmadou Kourouma), both published in the series CARAF Books (University of Virginia Press), of which he is the former series editor. He teaches courses in nineteenth century French poetry, La Fontaine’s Fables, Haitian and African literature in French, and advanced grammar and stylistic analysis, and is currently researching the structuration of sound patterns and versification in the Russian fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov.
Joël Des Rosiers, born in Haiti, is a poet and psychiatrist in Quebec, where he has lived since he was ten years old. His books of poems include Métropolis Opéra, Tribu (finalist of the Prix du Gouverneur general), Savanes (winner of Prix d’excellence de Laval), Vétiver, Caïques, and Gaïac. Winner of the Grand Prix of Montreal Book and the Grand Prix of International Poetry Festival, Vétiver has been translated into English by Hug Haelton and published in 2005 by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, and won the Governor General’s Award. In 2011, his literary publications garnered for him the Prix Athamase-David, Quebec’s most prestigious literary prize. His Théories Caraïbes, Poétique du déracinement, a critical monograph, was revised in 2009 and awarded the Prix de la Société des écrivains canadiens.
Footnotes
* From Caïques, poèmes (Montréal: Triptyque, 2007). Translation and excerpt published here by permission of the author and publisher.
