Entre Rive and Shore (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781773102870)

Shortlisted, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

"I used to think this was a book about a disguise,
but now I know that it's a book about translation."

According to Cormier family lore, Pierrot Cormier escaped a British prison the night before the Acadian Deportation by disguising himself in a dress. In the invigorating, transliterative Entre Rive and Shore, Dominique Bernier-Cormier uses his ancestor's escape to ponder what it means to live between two languages. Writing in a blend of English and French that evokes Chiac, "a living thing, growing gills, a voice from the future, prophetic and clear," Bernier-Cormier probes the mutability of language and of translation.

A heady mix of English renderings of a single French poem, a Franco-fusion m駘ange of reflections on Acadian history and identity, and meditations on the evolution of language and the rapper Young Thug, Entre Rive and Shore exhibits "an eloquence we aren't attuned to." The result is protean, an exhilarating collection that reassesses what it means to live between two identities, two worlds, two languages.

Author: Dominique Bernier-Cormier
ISBN-10: 1773102877
ISBN-13: 9781773102870
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Language: English
Published: 03/28/2023
Pages: 104
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.40d

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 02/27/2023