Main d’œuvre, Lorrie Jean-Louis
Mémoire d’encrier,
2023
With her second collection, Main d’œuvre (Workforce, or Labour), Lorrie Jean-Louis offers a song of love and repair. The theme of the collection is ostensibly work and exploitation, especially as they are found in what we briefly called ‘essential work’ and which Jean-Louis explains is the modern equivalent of slavery, marred by lack of respect and dignity.
The poems are short, untitled, unpunctuated except for question marks, uncapitalized except for the first letter. They are sentences that do not have an ending, or have not yet found one. They strike back; they are furtive, assured gestures that unmake what forced work creates – not the labour itself, but the lack of personhood, the disposability, the destruction of bodies. It begins with a lack that cannot be filled, and an impossibility of naming this hollowness:
“The choreography / of my servitude / has no title”
“La chorégraphie / de ma servitude / n’a pas de titre” (50)
The collection refuses structure: it begins with a short preface that sets the tone and brings the necessary concreteness to balance out the airiness of her writing; it moves into a first, untitled section, which interrupted by the title “Profane” which appears alone on a page and begins the longest section of the book. “Profane” can mean both “not sacred” and “non-specialist” – that which requires and contains no specific skill, that which is available to everyone, and needed from everyone:
“I am not workforce / I am an artisan of humanity”
“je ne suis pas main-d’œuvre // je suis artisane
d’humanité” (56)
In repairing, Jean-Louis in no way attempts to fix: she mends, she makes better, she helps keep people alive, she takes part in the task of living that work undermines:
“It is with stubbornness / that I cover my cracks”
“C’est d’entêtement / que je couvre ma fêlure” (94)
“What are you becoming / in this city / full of holes?”
“Que deviens-tu / dans cette ville / trouée ?” (54)
She takes on several voices, bringing in what we can assume are various speakers on the basis of conjugation and grammatical agreement. Yet she also takes on a collective voice through the indefinite character of these voices: “I write myself / in the masculine plural // I am / feminine singular” (“je m’écris / au masculin pluriel // je suis / féminin singulier,” 86).
The capitalization of the first letter of each poem only marks an arbitrary beginning, and a speaker dreams of a history without beginning or end (69). Jean-Louis’ voices are without a fixed origin, though she traces them back in their work and in the lineage to slavery:
“Africa missing / like a gaping // a vague memory / a deep notch // a song sweet / and bitter // like a belly / like a mouth // a lie / a gift // like a phantom limb”
“L’Afrique manquante / comme une béance // un souvenir vague / une entaille profonde // une chanson douce / et amère // comme un ventre / comme une bouche // un mensonge / un cadeau // comme un membre fantôme” (71)
This collection is one to dream with, to hold close, to pick up in moments of sadness and joy alike. It is a reminder of the life that runs through all work and, for most readers, through the lives of others who were only celebrated for a short while, and only so that they may be better exposed to death and further exploitation. It refuses the romanticization of the present, or of any future that might bring transformation: history will only pass through more hands – but it does, indeed, pass through them, becoming in the process of living.
Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His third chapbook, Bridges Under the Water (2023), is not-so-newly out with above/ground press. It follows Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020), as well as his most recent poetry collection, En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on various social media under variations of @lethejerome.
