Il n’y aura pas de safety word, Dominique Hétu
Hurlantes, 2025
Dominique Hétu’s collection Il n’y aura pas de safety word (“There will be no safety word”) begins with a section titled “Nommer” (“Naming”), and so I shall also name its topic up front: fatphobia, fat-shaming, fat existence. Its poems are neither round nor angular – which is worth stating, since the collection ends with: “and then / if someone / wants to be clever / wants to be cute // and says (to me) that / I made poems / that are so full // I’m gonna break something” (“pis là / si une personne / veut faire sa fraîche / veut faire sa cute // et (me) dit que / j’ai fait des poèmes / tout en rondeur // j’casse toute”).
In this collection Hétu uses confessional poetry to express what is not allowed to be said publicly, to give it shape, to let others hear what they tell her. She responds to social discourse as well as to very specific encounters. Her humour is biting; it does not facilitate exchanges and does not defer to the power of shaming. She takes a position that complicates feminism and the demands to be proud of oneself. By bringing forward, in verse, her internal monologue, she allows the internal and everything that is internalized to pierce through to the external, to the behaviour that is imposed on her, to work against it. More than self-affirmation, then, these are poems of self-reconstruction – not in the sense that is expected of body sculpting through various (paid for) technologies, but against the constant damages that come from intimate and social interactions: “clothes tagged x / mark of the fault / of error // we know it / it’s whatever / but still it’s violent” (vêtements taggés x / marque de la faute / de l’erreur // on le sait / que c’est n’importe quoi / mais reste que c’est violent,” 70).
Part of her approach is to dare us to be as forward about fatphobia as she is, to acknowledge its presence within us. One of the sections in the book is titled “Du vent,” or “Hot air” as in, “ce n’est que du vent,” “this is nothing but hot air.” Hétu targets the false niceties, the empty encouragements, the backhanded compliments, the hypocrisy of interactions around fatness. In the process, she leads an anti-meditation on beauty, focusing on the dynamics of expectation and imposition, focusing intensely on events, words, letting them repeat and showing them for what they already are and displaying everything they already contain, rather than letting go of them or deepening them. Take this poem, for instance:
for the moment
we’ll admit
that you have the
adequate outline
of beauty somewhere
traces
clues
we see them
under your soft
under the full flesh
be happy
pour l’instant
on va reconnaître
que t’as le contour
adéquat
du beau quelque part
des traces
des indices
on les voit
sous ton mou
sous la chair pleine
sois contente (44)
Hétu keeps her focus on pointing out the violence of forced compliments, pointing out what people are saying and doing when they are praising a picture, an outfit, in which she does not recognize herself.
She lets us see the amount of energy that is needed to resist the behaviour that is expected of her, notably with a giant break on the page between the two following stanzas: “christ are we ever obliging / we consent to everything / free for all // we / when I / cost too much courage” (“on est serviable en crisse / on consent à toute / free for all // on / quand je / coûte trop en courage,” 82). As in many other passages, Hétu plays on the strength of the “on”: at once they and we, someone and everyone, it is a force that is as much internal as external, making resistance a transcendent necessity, all the more difficult for the lack of external supports. Here then I translate “on” as we, to show the presence of undefined others in the self, the agency they have within the self, but especially the depersonalization of the self, its loss in an undefined group as she acts, something this passage in particular addresses through the loss of the je in the on, looking at herself in the third person instead of acting in the first.
Perhaps in order to gain some ground on the self, it is in great part through exploring an intimate relationship that was lacking in respect, in fact devoid of it, that Hétu develops a voice and gaze that talks and looks back:
I carry on my somber
shoulders
the burden winds that
ensure
your kind love
conditional
like a chorus
never fitting
flayed
I dance
you feel like lip sync
in spite of the heat
and the asthma that keeps
me weak
that hinders all rest
bitter and constant
noises
all around
that always take
that spoil the tune
I will not be your karaoke
je porte sur mes épaules
sombres
les vents fardeaux qui
assurent
ton amour gentil
conditionnel
comme un refrain
jamais raccord
au vif
je danse
tu as le goût du lip sync
malgré la chaleur
et l’asthme qui me garde
faible
qui empêche tout repos
bruits amers et constants
autour
qui prennent toujours
qui gâchent la toune
je ne serai pas ton karaoké (40)
Poetically speaking, the collection functions so well because of its straightforwardness, its plays on silence and quick turnarounds, and the explicit avoidance of rimes, of things being neatly put together, since for her they are not neatly put together, or placed in a manner that is accessible. Still, Hétu ends on the possibility that poetry might open onto other subjects – other topics and selves – and help her reconcile with uncertainty. Without hoping for this poem, for this poetry, she desires it, and goes a long way to bringing it to the page.
Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His fourth collection, Prairial·es, is now out with Prise de parole. Let us not forget his three chapbooks with above/ground press: Bridges Under the Water (2023), Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022), and Coup (2020), his occasional translations, and his book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has also edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that sometimes have to do with some of this. He is on various social media under variations of @lethejerome, notably at bsky.social.
