{"id":17678,"date":"2024-02-09T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?p=17678"},"modified":"2024-02-23T06:29:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T01:29:17","slug":"entre-rive-shore-dominique-bernier-cormier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/entre-rive-shore-dominique-bernier-cormier\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Redress: Entre Rive and Shore<\/em> by Dominique Bernier-Cormier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is often said that an essential quality of poetic writing is its immunity to translation. As Dante wrote in his Convivio<\/em>: \u201cnothing harmonized according to the rules of poetry can be translated from its native tongue into another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony.\u201d Dominique Bernier-Cormier would, I think, agree with Dante\u2019s image of translation as a form of violence, but what if one finds oneself born into a history that is already partitioned into languages, an identity whose forced confinement to a single language would seem as violent as any commerce between tongues? What if translation, rather than a vandal of harmony, became a necessary instrument for a more expansive poetics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Dominique Bernier-Cormier<\/strong>. Entre Rive and Shore.<\/em> Fredericton, NB:
Goose Lane Editions, 2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can think of Bernier-Cormier\u2019s Entre Rive and Shore <\/em>as an open-ended adaptation of an episode from the poet\u2019s ancestral history. In 1755, the year the Acadian Expulsion began, Pierrot Cormier escaped from Fort Beaus\u00e9jour disguised in a dress that his wife Nanette had smuggled into the British prison. As a result of what, in the book, comes to be thought of as Pierrot\u2019s \u201ctranslation\u201d (from bondage, from masculinity, from British authority), his descendants did not proliferate among the Cajuns of Louisiana. In what he calls a \u201ctext stuck entre deux langues,\u201d Bernier-Cormier orchestrates his own engagement with what was, what could have been, but also with what both is and isn\u2019t, a hybridity that characterizes his sense of split belonging between languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book works extremely well as a cohesive aggregation of related but varied parts. The backbone of the volume is a suite of attempted \u201cretranslations\u201d of Pierrot\u2019s escape, some aspirationally literal, some more spatial and visually eccentric. To translate once and then again suggests a refusal to believe in the possibility of a definitive rendering. Bernier-Cormier annotates his translations, uncovering, as in an anatomy theatre, the inner workings of artistic decisions: \u201cStutter<\/em> better than b\u00e9gaye<\/em>, the tongue skipping a step\u2026but sanglot <\/em>better than sob<\/em>, wet blood in the throat.\u201d One translation, he writes, feels \u201clike combing a waterfall, then putting it in a braid.\u201d Ultimately, the poet asserts his right to live in suspension between two languages, making use of translation, as well as mistranslation, as a contingent and reversible operation. The beauty of the hybrid form validates itself: \u201cThe bayou is an armurerie d\u2019argile \/ where blades of sun aiguisent leur feu.\u201d Central as those Pierrot variations are, Entre Rive and Shore <\/em>offers a wealth of other material. Emails from the poet\u2019s father restage conflicts of language and identity in a more contemporary dynamic. Gorgeous travelogues recount trips to Louisiana and New Brunswick. Playful impersonations and meditations extend the book\u2019s dramatis personae to an eclectic roster of linguistic transgressors: Bernadette of Lourdes, Walter Anderson, the Oracle at Delphi, Mata Hari, the Young Thug of Jeffery<\/em>. But what makes this book such a dazzling accomplishment is the combination of its completeness as an overarching project with its smaller-scale lustre on the level of individual images and lines (in a flooded room \u201cJellyfish floating near the ceiling like chandeliers\u201d). I cannot remember the last time I read a work of Canadian poetry so assured that I was reading a future classic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n
\r\n
\r\n \"\"\r\n <\/figure>\r\n
\r\n

Joseph Kidney<\/a><\/h3>\r\n

Joseph Kidney<\/strong> won the Short Grain Contest from\u00a0Grain<\/em>, and The Young Buck Poetry Prize (now the Foster Poetry Prize) from\u00a0CV2<\/em>, and was nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award. His poems appear in\u00a0Best Canadian Poetry 2024\u00a0<\/em>and elsewhere. His chapbook\u00a0Terra Firma, Pharma Sea<\/em> is available from Anstruther Press. [provided for the poem \u201cIn Which Alberta Plays the Old West (Not So Much in the Way That Angela Hewitt Plays Bach as in the Way That a Dog Plays Dead)\u201d]<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often said that an essential quality of poetic writing is its immunity to translation. As Dante wrote in his Convivio: \u201cnothing harmonized according to the rules of poetry can be translated from its native tongue into another without destroying all its sweetness and harmony.\u201d Dominique Bernier-Cormier would, I think, agree with Dante\u2019s image […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"2216","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"16394,17822,16472,16471","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2216],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[222],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3135],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17678"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17702,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17678\/revisions\/17702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=17678"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=17678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}