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In
Kapusta, Moure performs silence on the page and aloud, writing "gesture" and "voice" to explore the relation between responsibility and place, body, and memory, sorrow and sonority. Here, poetry flourishes as a book "beyond the book," in a space of performance that starts and stops time.
In
Little Theatres, Ern Moure's avatar Elisa Sampedrn first spoke about theatre and the need for smallness in order to articulate what is huge. Sampedrn, who reappears in the translation mystery
O Resplandor as the translator of a language she does not speak, vanishes later in
The Unmemntioable when the split in human identity that results from war and displacement is acknowledged. Now, in
Kapusta, the character E. is alone, in the smallest of spaces - the bench behind her grandmother's woodstove in Alberta. Here, E. struggles to face the largest of historical and imagined spaces - the Holocaust in Western Ukraine, and to understand her mother's silence at the sadness of her forebears, her "salt-shaker love."
About the author
ERÍN MOURE is a poet and translator (primarily of Galician and French poetry into English) who welcomes texts that are unconventional or difficult because she loves and needs them. Among other honours, she is a two-time winner of Canadäs Governor General¿s Award (in poetry and translation), a winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Nelson Ball Prize, a co-recipient of the QWF Spoken Word Prize, a three-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award in poetry, and a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.
Summary
In Kapusta, Moure performs silence on the page and aloud, writing "gesture" and "voice" to explore the relation between responsibility and place, body, and memory, sorrow and sonority. Here, poetry flourishes as a book "beyond the book," in a space of performance that starts and stops time.
In Little Theatres, Ern Moure's avatar Elisa Sampedrn first spoke about theatre and the need for smallness in order to articulate what is huge. Sampedrn, who reappears in the translation mystery O Resplandor as the translator of a language she does not speak, vanishes later in The Unmemntioable when the split in human identity that results from war and displacement is acknowledged. Now, in Kapusta, the character E. is alone, in the smallest of spaces - the bench behind her grandmother's woodstove in Alberta. Here, E. struggles to face the largest of historical and imagined spaces - the Holocaust in Western Ukraine, and to understand her mother's silence at the sadness of her forebears, her "salt-shaker love."
Additional text
“Moure’s ambition is to transform the performance of poetry into poetry itself . . . it makes for a remarkable reading experience.” Harvard Review on O Resplandor
Moure’s book is ambitious and deeply original. It is a book of poetry that dismantles poetry; its lyric impulses give way to fragmentation, repetition, and tropes from absurdist theater.
Kapusta bursts with energy, pulsing within a vice-tight formal sophistication, while exploring themes of love, family, loss and motherhood with a genuine, plain lovingkindness. — Quebec Writers' Federation's 2015 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry
“As the bones of the millions of massacred Jews rattle under the earth (and the corpses shift under the tarp on stage), Moure’s text shakes a stick at cultural deafness. The voice is turned back to the reader. ‘You are my VOICE!’ the character E. cries, and asks us to stop playing dead, to transform ash to pollen.” — Sarah Burgoyne,
ARC Poetry Magazine
