La Presse
Oscarine Bosquetwas born in Marseille in 1964, and is the author of Participe Présent (Le Bleu de Ciel, 2008) and Chromo (Éditions Fourbis, 1996). She teaches at the art school of Brest in Britanny. Sections of this book have appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter and Chain; previous poems have appeared in English translation by Michael Palmer in Raddle Moon, and a translation of her chapbook Mum is Down was published by Post-Apollo Press in 2014.
EXCERPT
— It’s Sunday once again the deadliest day for prisoners and for all who suffer from solitude February Wroncke the sun starts to blind me when I go out
Rosa descends into the prison garden listens 1917
— in a Europe which smells all over like moss briskly a window opens letting in a breath of crisp invigorating air.
——-—
I have a cursed urge for happiness and I am ready to bargain for my daily share of it with all the stubbornness of a mule August 2nd transferred to Breslau in the prison courtyard Rosa cried buffalo tears the skin’s thickness rips under the whistling blows of soldiers.
She sees before her the war whistling in all its splendor: the orgy of some thrown against the same ones for the sake of others.
She no longer sees the titmice.
———-—
There’s nothing more unlikely
more impossible
improbable (fantaisiste) far-fetched?
than a revolution one hour before it explodes
/strange sound of zeezeebay
/three notes/
/three short notes/
coal-tit
zeezeebay
blue black titmouse
zeezeebay nothing more simple
more natural obvious
than a revolution having delivered its first battle.
Sarah Riggs is a poet, critic, and visual artist. She recently completed a feature-length film, Six Lives: A Cinépoem and has had other film work shown at the Berlin Film Festival and at the Tate Modern in London. Author of seven volumes of poetry, her latest collection is The Autobiography of Envelopes (Burning Deck Press, 2012); other volumes include Waterwork (Chax Press, 2006) and Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street 2007). She is the director of the international arts non-profit Tamaas, which supports collaborative education, performance, and translation projects in France and Morocco.
Ellen LeBlond-Schradercompleted her Ph.D. in French literature at the University of California at Davis with a dissertation titled “The French Reader's Relationship to Poetry in the Electronic Age: Ponge, Alferi, and Vassiliou.” She currently teaches avant-garde movements in Paris and translates contemporary poetry as well as art criticism for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Castello di Rivoli Museo in Turin, and other institutions.
Oscarine Bosquet’s Present Participle is a book-length living verb that constitutes a call to action through language, and from all angles—from the way we listen to the way we shape our letters. In a dozen taut sequences, the book explores metaphorical and actual prisons and revolutions through references to political captivity, torture, and despotism as well as philosophical heroism through nuanced and striking phrasing. The writing reflects the sufferings of the distanced, whether physically, psychically, or emotionally, and pays particular tribute to the political leader and prisoner Rosa Luxembourg. Fragmentation, echo, and repetition construct a haunting verbal landscape that haunts, above all, itself.