Distillated into English by Jamie Sharpe
$6
Pastel
Strokes of dawn silhouette
her figure. Soft light. Colors
brush her skin. She breathes
in the palette of old ends
and new beginnings.
Translator's Preface
When I first encountered the poetry of Eudore Évanturel, I felt I’d stumbled across a misplaced heirloom: a finely etched reliquary of longing, wit, and restraint buried under a century of national amnesia. His images, though rooted in nineteenth-century Quebec, gleamed with modern edges.
My approach to this translation was not archival but sympathetic, even irreverent. I have rendered Évanturel’s French into a succinct English cadence not for fashion’s sake, but to let the poems exist without the velvet rope and museum glass. It is Évanturel in a world where existence is not an extended dance but a frequency, a beat. I hope I tapped into it, however briefly.
If these poems feel fresh, it’s because they always were. We simply forgot.
Jamie Sharpe (July 11th, 2025)
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Jamie Sharpe is the author of five previous poetry collections, the most recent of which is Get Well Soon. His next (and last) book, We, a novel-in-verse annexed from Russia, is forthcoming from ECW Press. He lives in Comox.
Eudore Évanturel (1852-1919) published one book of poetry, Premier Poésies, which was sparsely but poorly reviewed. Literary doors closed to him. He became moribund. Lost his job. Lost his friends. Basically: a paragon of the Canadian poet.
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