Verdunland, Timothée-William Lapointe and Baron Marc-André
Lévesque
Les Éditions
de Ta mère, 2020
So well-crafted is this utopian tale in verse that Timothée-William Lapointe and Baron Marc-André Lévesque disappear within their common writing style, appearing as a single teller (who speaks of themself in the plural and uses inclusive writing). Not a narrator, not a speaker, not an anthropologist or a theorist. Not someone spinning a tale, not a history, not a place in the future, not a place on a faraway planet (and not a dystopia!). No, they give way to a teller whose single presence accompanies you, the reader, calling upon you, guessing at your reactions, not too concerned about convincing you. After all, the tale is true. Tale is meant to translate conte, this genre akin to fantasy and to fable but with deep connections to a shared world, leaving room for intimacy and proximity between the teller and those who read the tale. Which they do admirably well – winking at traditional folk tales in the process. So well in fact that I wonder if maybe they’re not seeing something in Verdun others aren’t. I for one haven’t been to that part of Montreal, so I couldn’t say with any certainty.
I am told then that in Verdunland there is:
A mobile playground born out of children's resistance to shopping malls and isolation. A subcontinent made from children's uneaten, discarded breakfast cereal. An island inhabited by various robotic home appliances and toys respectful of the birds' mating season. A zoo – well, Verdunland is the zoo, and animals are just as likely to be gawking at you. A miniature bar where molecules wait on you. Flying cupboards. An ogre taking part in a hot dog eating contest.
And a whole lot more. And there is more than a series of vignettes or tales here. Close to the end of the book, we feel a shift: individual poems, or tales, are no longer descriptions of places, and become more a description of the feelings and moods these parts of Verdunland create in those who live there. And these feelings are beautifully rendered, reminders of the magic that attaches itself to places in childhood, feelings that are only fully experienced in the moment of leaving, knowing that we can return:
and because it’s
beautiful but it’s not over
you will bring
back your family and your friends
whose pockets are
full of shouts like gymnasiums
and you will come
back for all that is yet to be invented
for all that it
could be with you and with them
and if it’s not
for us
and if it’s not
for you
and if it’s not
for them
you’ll come back
for all these things
et parce que c’est beau mais c’est pas fini
tu ramèneras ta famille et tes ami•e•s
qui ont les poches pleines de cris comme des gymnases
et tu reviendras pour tout ce qu’il y a encore à
inventer
pour tout ce que ça pourrait être avec toi et avec eux
et si c’est pas pour nous
et si c’est pas pour toi
et si c’est pas pour eux
tu reviendras pour toutes ces choses (p. 90)
I don’t want to spoil what these things are so I won’t quote the rest of the poem here.
There are very funny moments throughout the book. Lapointe and Lévesque make way for a desire for the unexpected, for the implausible, they display a taste for the absurd. They draw on the ways children can imagine new, better impossible versions of what doesn’t quite exist – notably children’s ways of thinking about death: “What is death / if not trying / out new mattresses?” (Qu’est-ce que la mort / sinon un essai / de nouveaux matelas?, p. 75)
A series of imagined outrageous ways to dispose of corpses occupy this poem, each as convincing as pasta-themed similes in this earlier poem:
as if every
raindrop
was a tortellini
rolled with care
and then slid upon
the smallest golden tray
before being
dropped from a plane
at a safe speed.
comme si chaque goutte de pluie
était un tortellini roulé avec soin
et puis glissé sur une toute petite plaque en or
avant d’être largué d’un avion
à une vitesse prudente. (29-30)
There are great lyrical moments too – and yes, indeed, this book is beautiful, brave in its earnestness:
I too one day
will go dance
cheek against
cheek with Ella Fitzgerald
swim in cake and
throw friendly punches
that move from
shoulder to shoulder
drink with my
hands the light of the lampposts
before flying away
and nestling
in my vomit and
the clouds.
moi aussi un jour
je vais aller danser
joue contre joue avec Ella Fitzgerald
nager dans du gâteau et faire des bines
qui passent d’une épaule à l’autre
boire avec mes mains la lumière des lampadaires
avant de m’envoler et d’aller m’enrouler
dans mon vomi et les nuages. (p.
80)
Like Jean Leloup’s song-stories, these poems are neither entertainment nor social commentary. There is no morality, no lessons to take away from these tales. But there is also no naivety. The poems are, for the most part, about the need for connection – even the abandoned robots feel the sadness of having become useless.
And even solitude feels good in Verdunland. The book is a break, a pause – the book feels good, feels something like this:
You cross one leg
and the wind blows
on a warehouse
full of conjugation manuals in flames
the verbs the
actions the story wear down
in the spinning of
the clothes at the laundromat next door
immobility itself
stops by to ask for an autograph
but you don’t have
time you’re a bubble
that opens its
mouth to better chew
the lining of the
universe.
Tu te croises une jambe
et c’est le vent qui souffle
sur un entrepôt de bescherelles en flammes
les verbes les actions l’histoire s’abîment
dans la rotation du linge à la buanderie d’à côté
l’immobilité même vient te demander un autographe
mais tu n’as pas le temps tu es une bulle
qui ouvre la bouche pour mieux mâcher
les parois de l’univers. (p. 39-40)
