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The Wind Under Our Footsteps, a selection from four books by Diane Régimbald, startles with its energetic originality. Régimbald, a vital Quebec poet, appearing in English for the first time in a translation by Antonio D’Alfonso, leads the reader along a path of dark wisdom. The sequence is profoundly elemental and vigorous as it moves through the dreamlike spaces between the sensual and the mindful experiences of existence. The book begins with an epigraph from Paul Celan which sets the tone for the entire volume: “They told me that this is/in water a stone and a circle//and on water a word/ that draws a circle around the stone.” Life and death, light and dark, day and night, all are separated by the dawn. as consciousness is separated from the body. Diane Régimbald writes in the spaces between silence and language as the poet crosses the borders between the mind and self. An intricate and valuable work, The Wind Under Our Footsteps goes to the heart of language in this exquisite translation.
“Sobriety, economy of tools, and density give Diane Régimbald’s poetry an international appeal.”
~ Philippe Leuckx
“Régimbald borrows the weapons of words, the artifices that she uses for those who do not speak, and, in a theatrical way, she is able to touch the reality concealed in prevailing and fossilized speech.”
~ Daniel Gagnon
Diane Régimbald was a writer in residence in Amsterdam, Holland, in 2006, and in Amay, Belgium, in 2006. A widely published poet, she has given readings in America and Europe. Her work has been published in English, Catalan, and Spanish. She lives in Montreal.
Antonio D’Alfonso is an award-winning poet, essayist, novelist, and filmmaker. | |