Don’t you say I am making fake advertising or that I’m a lazy bastard (anyway, this laziness would be ok as long as I’m on holidays myself !). I vainly tried to lay off a portrait concerning the author published this month in Mauvaise Graine, it is to say Vincent Laurent, but as long as I only knew him through the few texts shown after and other e-mails that we exchanged him and we, I quickly said “damn it !” and simply asked him the following question : « what is writing ? ». I give you his answer just like he gave it to me via an e-mail : « Since I was a kid (6 - 7 year old), I tended more to express my emotions writing. I was a really sensitive kid and am an adult that writes like under the influence of urges. So, I sometimes might not write a single line for several weeks, months, and all of a sudden, with not warning, I write. Or rather, the words, the sentences come to me, obvious, in the tube, in my car, in the street, at work too, anywhere really. I’ve always « worked » that way. I can’t sit down at a table and think : « here, now, I’m gonna write, and so, on this one subject ». Just when the words, the sentences come in uneasy circumstances and places; a memorising effort becomes necessary. As soon as I can, I put these words down on a sheet of paper. Then the whole thing is not that much re-worked. I fill like my feelings, my emotions store up in my soul and get out fleetingly, shaped like words that fly away, like bubbles. I also feel like my soul work bit by bit on these emotions, the paper being only used afterwards as an easel. I have no writing rituals, writing a text generally only takes me a few minutes, it’s only a « copying out » job of what I have memorised. By the way, I noticed that, without looking for a link between each text, the link makes up itself as writing goes by. Like an internal walk that carries on in my soul and get out again unexpectedly. This can take a few months, a few years, or a few days. Anyway, without being able to explain why, I know when a poem book is over, and that there’s nothing more to say. Then, I read it again and understand what links them all. Writing comes to me without any foreseen project, nor preconceived idea of what I want to write. Concerning the inspiration spring, it’s obviously influenced by my relationships (lovers and mates), but also by an atmosphere, a feeling, a lot by silence and the isolation feeling. Writing is in fact the only invariable element in my life, the only one that, despite joys and pains I’ve lived, kept and invigorated and maturated with time. In fact, as long as I write, hope is here, an amazing space of freedom.» We discovered Vincent Laurent while the Prix Press-Stances 1997, his poem book Thus everything starts again receiving justly the special mention of the jury. And, as I was writing in the édito, the other author published this month doesn’t need introducing anymore, we all know him very well : Harry Wilkens who, after Terre Promise, at Cahiers de nuit editions, and The Hit-Man, published in Switzerland by Christine Zwingmann, and from which excerpts translated into French were published in Mauvaise Graine, in May 1997, sent us unreleased poems I translated and published in the following pages for you
MAUVAISEGRAINE #25
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