“It’s atrocious that you no longer make sound / sing for me I’ll sing for you / breathe and moan come on / you wanted us to / think what after / your death you said / think about it.” CAConrad’s poems, which have just been translated by POL editions, should be read as the product of a therapy. At the origin of the trauma: the homophobic murder of his companion Earth (Mark Holmes), “tortured, raped and burned alive”in 1998 in Tennessee. “The added violence of the police cover-up shook my confidence in this world and tore me apart for years”warns the American poet in Waiting to die in turn (While standing in line for death, in English), published five years ago across the Atlantic. To heal and overcome depression, nothing like poetry.
This involves exercises that the author, born in Topeka (Kansas) in 1966 and recognized as one of the figures of contemporary queer poetry by his peers (Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, among others), names “rituals”. Example: in 2013, CAConrad was invited by the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ residence in New Hampshire. There, at the foot of the Monadnock, he meditates every day with a quartz crystal on his forehead given to him by his companion before his death. From these sessions, punctuated by taking notes but also by dreams and other oddities (such as the fact of swallowing another small crystal every day), arises “restorative” prose. Consider the material of twenty-seven poems entitled “Expertises de la volière”: “Dear ghost of / flickering flames that no longer hurt / deflated lungs expanding / YOU SAY They can only burn / a fag once.”
This “somatic” poetry (based on routines that involve the poet’s body) also contributes to the healing of the world around him. Hear: the planet and its non-human inhabitants that CAConrad wants to undo from the suffering inflicted on them. An eco-activist work, which plays with bizarre forms and a sexual language (this is also why it is queer), of which we are impatiently awaiting the rest of the translation.
The extract
my poetry
comes from the demon me
informed my cousin
and I informed him that Odin
is the only god allowed
to fuck me bareback
not even jesus you understand
waterfalls to replenish the river below
experienced in all armageddon strategies
I’m a poetry demon
falling in the
Niagara un
roll in
a bottle
a love letter to
friendships in canada
that all the guards
borders are transferred to
honor
better
careers.