no interest in light
except strobe lights

no goose splitting the sky open in mid-flight
only that fucking shitty bird that bit me
on a school trip in 1998
sweatshirt says: I survived a bird attack

no emotion in front of stones
désolée to Yves Bonnefoy just the desire to pitch
rocks at windows

no mythological figure
just Aphrodite having a beer
with Artemis while checking out Apollo
and sometimes Persephone

in my poetry
no outpouring before the serene waves
just an ewww face to the filthy water of the
Saint-Lawrence-Anyways river

no nostalgia in front of the house where I was born
I passed by recently
it's become a crack house

no astonishment before the clouds
oh, wandering nomads
fucking toxic emanations from factories

my poetry
an uppercut to the nose

“Dans ma poésie” was originally published in Hochelagurls (2018) and this English translation appears with permission from Les Éditions de l'Écrou.

Audrey Hébert‘s first book of poetry, HOCHELAGURLS was published to wide acclaim in 2018 by the independent publisher Éditions de l’Écrou. Hébert was born in what is known by residents as the Hochelag (Hochelaga-Maisonneuve) in the east end of Montreal, and her writing reflects the realities of life in this neighbourhood. In 2015, Hébert completed her MA in Art History on the needlework of the French artist Louise Bourgeois. She is currently finishing her doctorate.

Deborah Ostrovsky lives in Montreal where she is an editor, writer, and translator. She recently attended the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC). Her previous translations of Audrey Hébert’s poetry have appeared in carte blanche and Montréal Writes

Image by Etienne Delorieux @etiennedelorieux