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.