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Poetry. Expeditions, taken up by the explorers we all are, ultimately cannot be read. Only experienced. On venturing into it, you'll find your ticket is no good, expired, or valid only on Tuesday. Your fellow travelers will tell you you are wearing the wrong shoes. If you force your way past the gate, you will stub your toe, scrape your shins, lose your suitcase, throw the book across the room in a fit of outrage or fall under its spell and suddenly find it half-submerged in your bathwater. At times, you will even laugh aloud. EXPEDITIONS OF A CHIMAERA is dialogic. Four pairs of hands try their luck at a game of cards. Nearby, questions sit, waiting to be asked. These expeditions are not progressions but digressions; they are translational in their effort to pull the author, kicking and screaming, out of the hat of authorial impossibilities.
About the author
ERÍN MOURE is a Montréal poet and translator curious about what's active in the poetry of others. Moure's most recent books are
Kapusta and
Insecession, a biotranspoetics published in one volume with her translation from Galician of Chus Pato's biopoetics,
Secession. Other recent translations include
White Piano by Nicole Brossard, translated with Robert Majzels from the French, and Galician Songs by Rosalía de Castro, translated from the Galician.
OANA AVASILICHIOAEI is a Montreal-based poet, translator, and artist. She is the author of many books, including
Expeditions of a Chimaera (with Erín Moure; 2009),
We, Beasts (2012; winner of the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry) and
Limbinal (2015). Previous translations include Suzanne Leblanc's
The Thought House of Philippa (co-translated with Ingrid Pam Dick; 2015), Catherine Lalonde's
The Faerie Devouring (winner of the 2018 Cole Foundation Prize for Translation), three books by Bertrand Laverdure, including
Universal Bureau of Copyrights (finalist for the 2015 ReLit Award,
Readopolis (winner of the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation), and
The Neptune Room (finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation).
