Chantal Neveu

Coit - Literature in Translation Series Chantal Neveu

Poetry. Translated from the French by Angela Carr. In COÏT, minimalist traces of language cling to a series of mapped channels. Every channel is a tenuous archive of choreographed gestures recorded by the poet from the edges of dance stages. Here, spaces hold words and words hold movement. A book marked by inexhaustible passages, this exquisite English language translation of Québécoise poet Chantal Neveu's fourth book invites the reader to collaborate in the making of both texts and spaces. Here, COÏT refers not only to coitus but to the act of moving in unison. Conceptual and intimate, COÏT is a consensual experiment that exceeds the form of the book.

"This is that rare book of poetry that makes you want to give it to everyone you know, because it affirms that precise relation, that knowledge, as embodied, contingent on distance, ephemeral?an electrifying site of potentiality. Dear Chantal Neveu: thank you for returning us to our gestures, to the edges of our bodies, of language, our given prosceniums, ducts. Dear Angela Carr: thank you for affirming, via translation, a book that is so uncommonly generous...that affirms (like translation) the world with the world."?Christian Hawkey