Thursday, June 4, 2020

Jérôme Melançon : Nous ne trahirons pas le poème, by Rodney Saint-Éloi


Mémoire d’encrier, 2019



Rodney Saint-Éloi founded Mémoire d’encrier (Inkpot Memory) in 2003 to add to the stories that were told in Québec, so that more stories may circulate and reach to those who didn’t find themselves in the rather homogeneous collective narration of the province. There is an approach to creation in such an editorial project, both of which have been incredibly successful. Mémoire d’encrier now gathers many of the strongest voices from immigrant and racialized Quebecers, Indigenous authors living in the province (Joséphine Bacon, Natasha Kanapé Fontaien, Naomi Fontaine), and translations - notably Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In a province where the collective narrative and collective narration are so strong, assertiveness and strength of voice are not sufficient to interrupt the stories that are retold in each publication.

In Saint-Éloi’s Nous ne trahirons pas le poème, a sense of history and a deep relation to it juxtaposes pasts, presents and futures to those of Euro-Quebecers (and would work just as well for Euro-Canadians). It does not go beyond juxtaposition, does not call out, does not seek recognition or inclusion; it’s enough to mention the Saint Lawrence river once to offer a point of junction and force a reconsideration of history and open a breach in what seems like a watertight vessel.

A strong, single poem runs across the entire book, sectioned on the page according to the length of the stanzas. Apart from the prologue and perhaps one break (63), there’s no narration. Some themes run throughout, others only for a few pages as the poem focuses and refocuses on varying aspects of a landscape. Saint-Éloi casts himself in the role of the poet who takes on songs of the world and of the past. Hence perhaps the title of the book, We Will Not Betray the Poem. I hesitated before picking up the book because I simply do not enjoy poems about poetry or about writing (or novels featuring writers). But there is no writing here, only singing. This poet is capable of metamorphosis, presents himself as both a pyromaniac and someone who is eager to share. The poem is all of this movement between states, often through portmanteau words and syntaxic deviations (31):

poussez fleurs blanches               grow, white flowers
arc-en-ciel mauve                        tidal rainbow
poussez phrases rebelles             grow, rebellious sentences
je existe je                                   I exist I
la foule attendra                          the crowd can wait
je m’aîle                                      I wing myself
je m’enîle                                    I island myself
je m’encannibale                         I cannibal myself
je m’africane                               I African myself
je nous utopie                             I utopia us
je dérisionne                               I deridize
déconfictionne le récit                defeactionize the story

The title also points to a sense of collectivity. The poet in the book is a single voice which carries the voices of others in his own: ancestors, ghosts, legends, lovers we imagine being in the past, the exiled, slaves, refugees, migrants, his own past, Damas, Gaza. They contain the experience of blackness, decoloniality, wars, and ties to Haiti and Africa. It is not clear who makes whom speak, who speaks through whom. The stories of the past, of the ancestors before and during slavery, are also his own. They move through him, as he moves through elements, transforms the elements, lives through earthquakes, shares the nature of animals, and moves through time. It’s not surprising then that the poet would have trouble adhering to his own body, to seek adherence to it. He seems more at ease with the sea, more immediately able to take on its materiality. He wants storms in the sentence (la phrase: there is no legality in the poem). Storms bring hope. He presents himself as arriving after the hurricane, an elemental figure of revolt and insurgency, as being born in typhoons, wanting his speech to be lapidary.

Taking on the figure of the sea is also a way to take it back from those who control it and dehumanize migrants - like Achille Mbembe (Politique de l’inimitié) and Patrick Chamoiseau (Migrant Brothers) he ties together the fate of migrants and that of slaves crossing oceans. The poem makes the sea into more than a mass grave and reaffirms solidarity where it is illegal (88-89):

défense de solidarité                             solidarity defense
je commande mes fantômes                 I command my ghosts
m’apprête à faire communauté             ready myself to make community
m’apprête à faire humanité [...]            ready myself to make humanity [...]
migrants au corps lacéré                       migrants with lacerated body
gonflé d’un rêve radical                        swollen with a radical dream

Writing is an act directed toward the future - it lies ahead, like the poet’s childhood remains ahead of him; as such, it will not betray the past, nor the future. The betrayal is that his name is not his own: it is borrowed, it bars him from playing his role as “guardian of the continents.” It continues the first betrayal, which he mirrors and brings to an end by selling the poem to something greater:

          je vends à crédit le poème                               I sell the poem on credit
aux esprits (13)                                                to the spirits
Whereas 

          l’ancêtre maîtrisait les ombres                         the ancestor mastered the shadows
          sa voix n’était pas négociable                          his voice was not negotiable
          son âme n’était pas négociable (35)                 his soul was not negotiable

Of course, he was sold nonetheless. The poet, in solidarity with James Baldwin, refuses to belong to anyone, rejects and accepts his blackness. The poet here seeks to be true to the shout, the scream that comes from the past, from history, and from the earth, and continues through generations to bring air into time, to free it from asphyxiation. This shout takes down “nobilities properties / empires dynasties / constituted authorities.”  (105)

The poet becomes the song, has an appointment with history. He passes through history as he passes through language, in the manner of saying as well as in what is said. Aside from his borrowed name, he is also named and names himself (je m’appelle) decolonial. His decoloniality is tied to remembrance and is a way to swim, to dance, to live in two elements at once. His proximity to elements, especially to storms, makes him a “decolonial wildling.” His “decolonial faith” is the sole ray of light in a series of oppressions and makes him able to live in movement and insubordination (79):

          chemin d’eau                                                  path of water
moitié décoloniale                                          decolonial half
j’aurai une maison pour l’errance                  I will have a house for wandering

And (75)

pour ne pas trahir l’horizon                            to not betray the horizon
bâtis la maison de la phrase insoumise          build the house of the insubordinate sentence

History is material in this book, perhaps even elemental: an element that has the same weight and possibility as the traditional elements, not metaphorically like the sea, but sharing an ontological status. Saint-Éloi sings at the same time oppression and the oppressed, domination and emancipation; he sings “freedom/nothing but freedom” (92), hears and conveys the injunction to become song rather than to be a builder. Shortly after the image of “insurgent dusks,” he ends on “the decolonial dawn / of high tides” (107) that is at once tied to his existence, and what he demands.

In his breath, his manner of singing, Saint-Éloi reminds me of Neruda’s Canto General, although the poem is more existential than epic. It might also be facile to say that I was also reminded of Dionne Brand; after all, they share Caribbean origins and a commitment to developing a voice that belongs to both worlds, with hope but without compromise with the forces of history that define their positions. Saint-Éloi’s poem does not tell a story, develop a discourse on history, or advocate for change. It embodies them, intertwines them with beauty and hope, gives them the materiality of voice, and transforms language to be able to do so.





Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in Regina, SK. He is the author of two books of poetry, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016) with Éditions des Plaines, one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018), and has a bilingual chapbook forthcoming with above/ground press, Coup.