Guest of Honour Canada: Singular Plurality - the name says it all.

At the close of Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019, Margit Walsø, Director of NORLA (Norwegian Literature Abroad), handed over the GuestScroll, an artistic token designed especially for Frankfurter Buchmesse, to Caroline Fortin, President of Canada’s Guest of Honour organizing committee. The traditional presentation of the GuestScroll in the Guest Country Pavilion is intended to connect the guest countries symbolically and literarily. Every year, the GuestScroll is extended by a literary contribution from the next guest country: Canada wrote itself into the scroll with a poem by Georgette LeBlanc. Canada’s parliamentary poet laureate 2018-2019, and including lines from a number of works representing Canadian literary talent.

J'sons
De parenté à parenté à parenté
All my relations

C'est ici le lieu du poème
Et nos yeux sont remplis de paysages vivants
We should know, we are the dreamers.
X, we are responsible
For Beauty.

Je prends la glace par les hanches
Je sais ce que je fais malgré ma jeunesse
His mother talks in pictures
Language, too, is a natural phenomenon.

Ej parle le pissenlit, le corbeau, et une miette de goemon
Creative activity of all kinds becomes possible
Energy is no longer suppressed
Il y a toujours une vie à faire
ou à refaire
De parenté à parenté à parenté

Poem by Georgette Leblanc, with excerpts from various authors
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I am, are*
From relation to relation to relation
All my relations

Here is the place of the poem
And our eyes are awash with the living
We should know, we are the dreamers.
X, we are responsible
For Beauty.

I take ice by the thighs
I know what I am doing, regardless of my youth
His mother talks in pictures
Language, too, is a natural phenomenon.

I speak dandelion, crow, some seaweed
Creative activity of all kinds becomes possible
Energy is no longer suppressed
There is always a life to create
or recreate
From relation to relation to relation

*loosely translated from the Acadian "j'sons", the collective "I". The singular pronoun is, exists and creates in its individuality and plurality synchronistically.

English translation by Georgette Leblanc  

Reprinted exclusively by the Frankfurter Buchmesse with permission from Canada FBM2021. Please contact Meghan Macdonald at mmacdonald@canadafbm2021.com for all queries pertaining to rights and permissions.

References to the quoted poems may be found here.