Béatrice Machet

 

 

(France)

 

 

 

TREMOR

 

It’s a headquake / faults in the brain / rifts at the bottom of the grey matter / and the electric power running through the eyes first then invading the consciousness extinguishes / and the concussion grows stronger.

It’s due to temperament / always a kind of overflowing movement followed by remorse / dotted with splinters so as to imitate the hedgehog  / something like beneath a gruff exterior / so as to scratch letters / an healthy peeling makes skin flakes rain / dandruff are to words what scales are to snakes / causing the tongue to split.

It has it drilling and it relieves the dark and it goes meet wells till the confluence of flows/ trembling head into which the unconscious idea of a web/ of a delta as a set aside land and in front of eyes the lanceolate sidestroke swimming / tossed though hold back by the water pressure / vaguely wavily oval.

With a plane with a file a scraping of concentrated shadows before they explode at the heart of night in the head / they have hands till blood at wrists to be exchanged / until death does them part a faithful knot as far as a scream on the edge of eyelids /

In the light of thirst a bunch of branches and of ramifications under the skull / don’t make a forest / not even a bush not even a bundle (of nerves).

Someone is speaking to me with eyes that are not yours someone in the night flirts with my madness’ shade / sweet I don’t have any halo but this shadow accompanying me from eye-socket to temples where blood pulses / and it says all my head and my body in the night of my living death/

 

 

 

It’s about…

 

It’s about speaking and it’s about movement

It’s about how to travel through words and the way they move

It’s about how to be moved and how to voice it

Thus it’s about how to go away into a poem

The way you can tell you go by somebody’s side

This body by your side you could caress it and it would stay

silent while your gesture and posture would speak

without betraying the poem

 

 

 

TAKING WITHIN

 

a movement to be named

taking within

then carried in one’s voice

spreading like water

where the level of the ground is

at its lowest

when eyes cannot absorb the night

for always some lightning in their skies

something like an embrace

the magic of whispers

this strength would defy gravity

would prevent love’s allies

from being wrenched

would grant shadows some flesh

something that was taken within

is released out

with breath going further

farther and farther than sound and voice

does this movement mean

as etymology teaches

comprehension

when it is taken with

and without even thinking

given back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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BIO

 

Béatrice Machet is a French poet, whose dance lessons as a child influenced and still influence her writing. She is also working on and translating contemporary Native American authors (about 30) whose texts and works she translates into French. After having been involved in the French science-fiction milieu, she met Jean-Hughes Malineau, a Gallimard editor, who encouraged her to begin a career as a poet. From this initial meeting, each published poetry book of hers will testify to an evolution in her writing practice. Author of 12 books of poetry in French, two in English since she dared to directly write in English 8 years ago, plus many chapbooks and “livres d’artiste”, author and translator of three anthologies about contemporary Native American poetry, she is used to collaborating with artists from all kinds of disciplines such as painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, video-makers, dancers and choreographers, and with whom she performs her poetry. She is on editorial boards of french poetry magazines such as Recours au poème, Sur le dos de la tortue, Les cahiers d’Eucharis. She has had writer residences, gives many lectures about Native American literature, is regularly invited in international poetry festivals in France and abroad. She leads creative writing workshops, is called for teaching and performing in schools and colleges as a visiting creative writing professor (as far as the US and China). Her work is translated into Dutch, Romanian, Bulgarian, Spanish, English, Spanish, Albanian, Russian and now into Chinese.

 

New books: For Unity, ASM Press 2015, Les gens-pierres avec le peintre Henri Baviera 2015
                      Salse Sans Pareille, éditions le petit véhicule 2016
                      Poésie du dernier souffle, éditions du Frau 2017