Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three : Claudia Souto Cuello (trans. by the author + Stuart Ross,

[Mia Morgan of Coven Editions and Dr. Dessa Bayrock of post ghost press]

[see the first part of these notes here; see the second part of these notes here]

Cobourg ON/Switzerland: Every few months, thereemerges further conversation how there isn’t enough literary translation occurringthrough Canadian publishing (Jérôme Melançon conducted a really compelling interviewrecently with Yilin Wang, for example, posted over at periodicities: ajournal of poetry and poetics), so it was good to see Swiss poet Claudia Souto Cuello’s chapbook, A braced triptych, translated from the Frenchby Stuart Ross & the author (Proper Tales Press, 2025). As the authorbiography mentions, Cuello “inherited the Spanish and French languages from herSpanish parents living in Switzerland. After working for years as a vegetablegrower, she published her first collection of poetry, Marina (éditionsdu goudron et des plumes, 2023).” The pieces in the collection exist as threepoem-clusters that could be three poems, or three cluster-sections—“Cathedralof Leaves,” “A little patch of yellow wall” and “The Ornaments”—each of whichexist through a blend of prose-stanzas and individual lines. The structureoffers a curious counterpoint of structures within poems, within pieces, thatplay multiple rhythms, narrative purposes, and declarative sentences. WhereasCuello’s poems lean into prose poem structures, there’s elements of theextended first-person meditative and declarative line of such as the late EtelAdnan (1925-2021), working a kind of lyric diary of the moment, running throughthe light and the dark of the current moment, or at least the moments across thetime of composition. Might Ross be working to get a full collection of thesehappening? I would certainly hope so.

When the fog arrived, thetimeworn lavoir and the weathered fountain tucked their necks into the hunched shoulders.Alone, circling the trees, tree by tree, I hung my words on the little coatracks of their leaves, like a little dictionary made of dry branches. And so itcame to me that I had nothing left to say. Trapped in this bottle-green, to bedrunk before winter arrives, my suspended words looked down on me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

{Before the lightfollowed me, I stepped in}