Lénaïg Cariou

Sandra,

-after Exercices d’incendie by Sandra Moussempès

Heels twist under the body

                     of straw          - series of woods

                     flooded             -    grey winter

-       black hairs                  ( ra-

ven,                  in the distance )

I am one of those who disturbs

those               who are torched

those              who are silenced

-        hand to hand           where

the forgotten                perfume

of raspberries                remains

I hypnotized             the little girl

at the edge of the road    -  and

the tar                          followed

by the tar         ( on-screen suc-

cession   of landscapes of fields

shifting )            – he was always

missing                 a   beige sock

(a stray ribbon ) – and the garish

red      immobile        and mute

a doll                            with a hole

in the upper back,          for crying

-                      or a cabin, in a tree

pent up           – nothing that lies

out loud           barely the outline

of an off-screen         ( she sings,

yet )          - she is digging a hole

into the earth    ( with her nails )

to bury                       the box of

her first years                – a little

toy                                 soldier

her fixed regard, directed at something

that she             couldn’t                  see

-         rhythmic alignment of wooden

poles                 -                a faceless

crowd ( the street )     -         we always

say that                       the meeting point

between     what is possible  and what 

is not possible        ( or the carcass of a

tree       that rises up       from a pond ,

its shadow in water )    –   so beautiful

emptiness                        as close            

as                             the embrace

-        the bifrontal mask           of

the male gaze                    (ugly,

filthy)               - she remembers

the worrying           whiteness of

two women  ( their backs, under

the moon )    - their broken cries

-  the muted image, on-screen –

so  I coin the verb to cassandra

I lock myself in the shower, each morning,

I take my vitamins,                 I am happy

-        one by one I recite   my exercises

in apathy       ( don’t feel,         you see,

don’t feel ) -           sometimes a levee

to which we can’t see an end     (the

neighbors’ curtains discreetly drawn )

she says it’s not that that it’s talking

about  (she fidgets)   child, yet never

had she been good         (she catches

the pink leg,      making a knot of it )

Translated from the French by Carrie Chappell

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Statement of Homage 

I read Sandra Moussempes’ work for the first time on a 7-hour train ride from Paris to Toulouse, where I was going to visit friends. Sandra had sent me her books by mail a few weeks before, including her first book which is beautiful with its dark red cover and now pretty hard to find.

I dissolved myself into her books during that very strange temporality of long train journeys. We stopped sometimes for hours at stations because of technical problems, and at some point, I just forgot the time.

I read Sandra’s collections one after another in a chronological way – which I haven’t done for that many poets actually, particularly contemporary ones. But Sandra had given me that present: being able to follow her poetic path carefully, year after year, book after book, until today. I really enjoy this feeling of observing an œuvre unfolding: I could hear the resonances between the different books, the characters and references that came back: a whole poetic universe.

I enjoyed all of them, for the way they offer bold critiques of sexist prejudices, the way they were full of uncanny feminine figures which embodied the complexity of what it means to be a woman in our societies. I loved the way she plays with the techniques of cinema, intertwining fragments of images and voices. I became friends with all the ghosts that haunt her texts – they reminded me of my own monsters.

I was also so sensitive to all the references to other women poets all over her books —quotations, homages, scattered throughout, to Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Gaspara Stampa, Virginia Woolf, Unica Zürn. I felt so grateful that she was so aware of the importance of women lineages, particularly at a moment when it wasn’t so easy to do so in a male-dominated poetry scene in France. Decades later, I was myself trying to reconstitute this lineage of women poets, to help me find my own voice – or rather my own voices. I guess it’s also why I immediately felt the need to write a text inspired by her poetry.

But one book really moved me: the very first one, Exercices d’incendies. When it came out, Sandra was 29. Apart from this wonderful title, her very subtle attempt to create some short poetic pieces out a young woman's life, in relationship with her childhood, using some very authentic but at the same time almost theatrical objects struck me.

I started from the very text of this book, quoting it at the beginning of my poems. This is one of the poems, entitled Sandra, that resulted from my conversations with her.

Sandra Moussempès

Sandra Moussempes is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Photogénie des ombres peintes for which she received the Hercule Prize of Paris, and, more recently, Cassandre à bout portant. After having been a singer in several electronic music bands in London, she built her poetic universe in dialog with music and cinema – and continues performing her work and recording music alongside her poetry writing. Part of her work has been translated into English by Elena Rivera, and her latest book is currently being translated by Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy. In 2022, she received the Théophile Gauthier Prize from the French Academy for her oeuvre.

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