Jérôme Melançon : Nipinapunan, by Alexis Vollant

Nipinapunan, Alexis Vollant
Éditions Hannenorak, 2023

 

 

 

Alexis Vollant’s collection Nipinapunan is a story that dwells on what runs beneath relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and, here, specifically, between an Indigenous woman and a non-Indigenous man: her boyfriend, who sees himself as a “good ally.” The structure of the collection is operatic, reflecting Vollant’s day to day concerns as a music student (now graduated!) in Vancouver. The occasion of the story is a return home to the North Shore of the Saint-Lawrence River, to her/his home community of Pessamit.

The structure brings this story into a rushed linearity, moving from the Overture to the First then the Second Movement, to the Intermission, and ending immediately with a Postlude, as if something ended early – as if the protagonist and narrator (the speaker, literally, who speaks to her boyfriend) had discovered something untenable about this relationship that brought it directly into a past tense even as the two remain together.

One of the grandest poems in the collection shows that this relationship already was muted, contained, or limited, perhaps because of the stunting effects of colonialism on the capacity to create relationships:

“I have a fire for you / it’s not much / but it’s burning / that’s something [...] and if the fire threatens to go out / I’ll light it again / because life is a series of fires / that make it so that life never goes out”

“j’ai un feu pour toi / ce n’est pas beaucoup / mais il brûle / c’est quelque chose [...] et si le feu menace de s’éteindre / je le rallumerai / car la vie est une série de feux / qui font que la vie ne s’éteint jamais” (47)

Repetition here brings our attention to relatedness, to mutual reinforcements – to the need for relationships, but also to the unavoidable repetition of past relationships and all the fear and danger that comes with a difficult past, and, also, to the lasting possibilities of life in spite of these threats.

Vollant often includes words in Innu-aimun, with some irony when they are (badly) spoken by the white boyfriend, and with some defiance and much love when they are the only words that will hold up the poem, or when on three occasions they make up the entire poem, without translation. He juxtaposes Innu-aimun and French, inhabiting the space of their inequality, highlighting their oppositions and differences, and especially the inability of French to mingle with the territory. After all, the speaker reminds us:

“We come from here / as much as our blood / ute / our tongue double with wood and bark / with the forest that crowns our reserves”

“Nous venons d’ici / autant que notre sang / ute / notre langue de bois et d’écorce / de la forêt qui couronne nos réserves” (60)

Unlike Joséphine Bacon, who is also from Pessamit and who offers her poems in mirror versions so that their original language is never stated, Vollant writes in French or in Innu-aimun, and only translates into French as one might do so in speaking around a unilingual person, a concession made to explain a point that needs to come through. The other poems are there, and he leaves it up to each of us to use the tools we can to understand more of their meaning… or create our own relationships.

There is great, straightforward beauty in Vollant’s poetry. Most lines are clear, clean, direct, and some take on great imagery:

“the white speed of a death-approaching routine” (“la vitesse blanche d’une routine de trépas,” 33)

“The forest sends out subtle vibrations” (“La forêt lance des vibrations subtiles,” 40)

“I repainted the sky of my apartment” (“J’ai repeint le ciel de mon appartement,” 53)

While lines such as these might be able to exist in isolation, most depend on the support they give to others and receive from them. As Vollant moves through poems, always with these lines, he creates carefully and with great effect dynamics that lead to swelling moments and moments of respite and breath. Nipinapunan is able to fully contain at once a story and poems by abandoning some of the typical forms of storytelling and poetry, while focusing on some of their sharpest aspects.

 

 

Read Jérôme Melançon’s translation of Four poems by Alexis Vollant.

 

 

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His third chapbook is Bridges Under the Water (2023) was published with above/ground press, as were Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020). His most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021), and 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.