Celebrating Canadian Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate than by curling up with the UOP’s new volume of poetry, coming out later this month.

Ricochet, by Seymour Mayne, is a collection of word sonnets – fourteen line poems with only one word per line. Though the poems are short and sweet, including a single sentence (sometimes two,) these sonnets create a world of meaning with their depth and complexity. Seymour Mayne is the author, editor or translator of more than fifty books including Les pluies de septembre (Éditions du Noroît, 2008), and Light Industry (Mosaic Press, 2000).

This bilingual edition includes a version of each poem in both French and English, which presented the additional challenge of translating the sonnets. The brave and capable translator is Sabine Huynh, a novelist, short story writer and a poet in her own right.

Here’s a look at the word sonnet Calendar and its translation. Enjoy!

Calendar

She
awoke
Monday,
it
was
April
on
the
calendar,
December
on
the
snowcovered
ground.

Le calendrier

Elle
se
réveilla
lundi,
le calendrier
indiquait
avril,
la
neige
recouvrant
le
sol,
décembre.

If you would like more information on Ricochet, check out the UOP website: http://www.press.uottawa.ca/book/ricochet