excerpt from White Piano
without story no spilt wine
nor conversation nor caress that swims
and rosy contour around the fingers
nor photo of you who wanted
naked, brief and full of oxygen
excerpt from White Piano, by Nicole Brossard,
translation by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels
Coach House Books, Toronto, 2013
Born in Montréal. Poet, novelist and essayist, twice Governor General winner for her poetry, Nicole Brossard has published more than thirty books since 1965. Many among those books have been translated into English: Mauve Desert, Lovhers, The Blue Books, Museum of Bone and Water, Notebook of roses and civilization (trans. by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels, Shortlisted for the Griffin international poetry prize 2008), Fences in Breathing (novel) and Selections : the poetry of Nicole Brossard, University of California Press, 2009. She has cofounded and codirected the avant-garde literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965-1975), has codirected the film Some American Feminists (1976) and coedited the well acclaimed Anthologie de la poésie des femmes au Québec, first published in 1991 then in 2003. She has also won le Grand Prix de Poésie du Festival international de Trois-Rivières in 1989 and in 1999. In 1991, she was attributed le Prix Athanase-David (the highest literary recognition in Québec). She is a member of l’Académie des lettres du Québec. She won the W.O. Mitchell 2003 Prize and the Canadian Council of Arts Molson Prize in 2006. Her work has influenced a whole generation and has been translated widely into English and Spanish and is also available in German, Italian, Japanese, Slovenian, Romanian, Catalan and Norwegian. In 2010, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2013, she received le Prix international de littérature francophone Benjamin Fondane. Her most recent book translated into English is White Piano. Nicole Brossard lives in Montréal.
