The Lost Poem, Le Cerf, 2018.
Listen to The Lost poem on You tube
Incipit
Nobody ever warned us about anything, we were no actors
We should soon have our hair dyed you know
I was a little child once
Now I grow old
I can remember everything at last
Put your hand on my forehead mom, I will survive your death and I am scared
Show us your hands, the sisters said
We weren’t warned about anything, neither told children we were
And now, not even a soul to tell us “Go brush your teeth”
Buttocks stiff, tied guts, we show our hands and
I can hear the footsteps of the soldiers in the courtyard
We show the palms of our hands and we show the back of our hands
Put your hand on my forehead
My breasts are sagging
We’ve got Bra cups’ problems now
We age
A German song cries out of famine down here in the cloisters of my belly.
Back cover
Digging deeper book after book on her path as a woman and a writer, Laurence Nobécourt is adding to her literary work two pieces of writing whose profundity is quite out of the common thus standing for a quest for true harmony between body and soul.
In The Lost Poem – Le Poème Perdu -, Laurence Nobécourt (is it truly herself?) calls out to her mother and retraces the life of a modern woman who struggles against the unfair tricks of society and against flying Time. On the occasion of her reading her poem on France Culture Radio, here’s Telerama’s comment at the time : “An ambitious, magnificent piece of writing that has sprouted out of her guts. The achievement of many years of camouflage, fear, not withstanding the feeling of illegitimacy as a Poet”.
After having signed more or less fifteen novels (among which let’s mention La Vie Spirituelle – The Spiritual Life – or Grâce leur soit rendue – Praised be they -, Laurence Nobécourt hazards a new style, both poetic and sensitive, in her new work to be published at Éditions du Cerf. She lives now amidst the hills of la Drôme provençale where she has launched a creative writing workshop in the small village Dieulefit.
Traduction de Narjisse Moumna