Erín Moure
Erín Moure is one of Canada's most eminent and respected poets, and a translator from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese. Winner of the Governor General's Award for Furious, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Domestic Fuel, and the AM Klein Poetry Prize for Little Theatres (which has also been published in Spain in Galician translation as Teatriños), Moure has published twelve books of poetry, including A Frame of the Book, co-published in the U.S. by Sun and Moon Press, and five books of poetry in translation, including Sheep's Vigil by a Fervent Person by Fernando Pessoa, shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2002 City of Toronto Book Prize. Moure lives in Montreal.
My own daughter, heart is what I grieve
to see you so often in tears I griev
and thus I will ask what it is that rends
that you may tell me from yr sens
Why do you go about so sad and crying?
Mother I can t always be singing along.
It s not that I d see you allways in song
But you cry so often and with great pain
There is some lover you love with grand vow
I ask you now if god wd allow
Why do you go about so sad and crying?
Mother I can t always be singing.
Songs won t always be ringing.
Songs can t always be sung.
[1067] #1134 Pero de Veer
Were it in my power to love such world
In my honesty, and curve
of my ribs around such heart I have
or lung for breath, and alive
here, wanting world as she
to be in me
A creased grave-shroud is my foreboding
A careen or fall, and would you want me ever
world, for it is world I feel such weight for
forlorn or moving forth, though such a world
be questionable, warring, some
privileges at odds with their own mastery
and mastery of me
and yet kindness is ever all I dreamed of, from
you world. Vast vagueries.
I love you still.
Poisoned, delicate world. I love you still.
[940] #995
Erin Moure
excerpts from:
O Cadoiro
by Erín Moure
House of Anansi, Toronto, 2007
Used by permission
click here to order this book and other Erín Moure titles from House of Anansi
O Cadoiro is an astonishing exploration of lyricism by one of our greatest poets, best known in recent years for her challenging experimental work. But where experimental poets often disdain lyric, Moure embraces it, revelling in its beauty and its radical modernity. Rooted in medieval Galacian-Portuguese cantigas, the poems in O Cadoiro are a breathtaking passage through archive, rhythm, address, and the mystery and wound of authorship itself.
