White Piano

By Nicole Brossard

language I'll say yes
from the top of my rib cage
language will you come
out and unearth the salt the certitude

Between the verbs quivering and streaming, White Piano unfolds its variations like musical scores. A play of resonance between pronouns and persons, freely percussive between prose and poetry, and narrating a constellation of questions, White Piano offers readers a 'language that cultivates its own craters of fire and savoir-vie.'

'At once achingly aware of mortality and hell-bound in its determination to press forward, change, and grow, White Piano is as brave as it is linguistically rich.'

– Quill & Quire

'[Brossard] writes with a poetic intensity that burns select lines and sometimes entire paragraphs into the reader's mind.'

– Montreal Gazette

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Feb 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781770563445

Nicole Brossard

Two-time Governor General’s Award winner for her poetry, Nicole Brossard has published more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, and essays since 1965. She has co-founded and co-directed the literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965-1975), co-directed the film Some American Feminists (1976), and co-edited the acclaimed Anthologie de la poésie des femmes au Québec (1991 and 2003). Her work has been widely translated into English and Spanish and is also available in many other languages. Nicole has won numerous awards, including winning the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival Grand Prix Québecor in 1989 and 1999, the Prix Athanase-David in 1991, and the the first Violet Prize awarded by the Blue Metropolis Festival in 2018. One of her novels, Mauve Desert, has been presented as a multidisciplinary creation in 2018 and is slated for an opera adaptation in 2020-21. She is an officer of the Order of Canada, chevalière of the National Order of Quebec, and a member of l’Académie des lettres du Québec. Nicole currently lives in Montreal.

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