Little Theatres: Poems

by Erín Moure

Erin Mouré, a frequent nominee and winner of the Governor General’s and other literary awards, is one of the most consistently innovative, imaginative poets at work in Canada. With each book, Mouré seeks nothing less than to re-create the act of writing from the ground up. Little Theatres follows this approach, appearing at a timely crossroads, when we most need our language to come alive again. Like the water imagery that filigrees through this collection — at once lingual exchange, submersion, balm, and sustenance — Mouré's multiplicity of voices is fluid, clear, animated, and as shimmering with light and life as ever. Galician and English intermingle in this collection like currents of the same river. An intimate act of cultural and personal interflow, this new work from a major poet has the power to alter the reader’s perception of where, and on what scale, the action is taking place.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Erín Moure is a transborder poet and translator of poetry and poetics. In Canada, the USA, and the UK (variously), she has published seventeen books of poetry, and several books of prose including a memoir and a book of short takes on translation. Her most recent book is Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (ed. Shannon Maguire, Wesleyan 2017). She is the translator or co-translator of seventeen books of poetry and three books of non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese into English. Her translation of Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017) was a finalist for a 2018 Best Translated Book Award. She holds two honorary doctorates for her contributions to poetry and translation, from Brandon University in Canada and the Universidade de Vigo in Spain. She lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Patch · Rating 4 out of 5]

hard to describe... like....there is a wound where the Tower of Babel used to be and we feel it every time something is lost in translation. This is like if that wound were Christ's side wound and Moure is alchemizing all the blood and pain into fresh water and renewel and life and beauty. I liked the poem that compared jesus to an onion.

[Insert name here · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very smart book of poems, with some subtle commentary on authorship through some deliberate confusion between Erin Moure and Elisa Sampedrin, an alter ego who "writes" some of this book.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with "little theatres," this book features a selection of quotes by Elisa Sampedrin. For example: "Little theatres is a small machine. But not infinitely small. Finite. A small machine." And: "In little theatres, the stone is about as stony as it can get without making the public's head suffer a blow." I've been reading this book for a few months, on and off, and currently my favorite section is the Homenaxes a auga / Homages to Water. Homage to the Mineral of Cabbage, Homage to the Mineral of the Onion, Homage to the Force of the Potato. These poems bring their subjects to life with language that make them alive but also finite, without being realistic or representational. "The onion is the way/ fog has of entering the earth."

Many poems are presented in both Galician and English, or a mix of the two. The lyric Moure employs here is fantastically musical. There is water, language, and lots of stuff. Beautiful stuff.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

She is very creative.

[DeWitt Brinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed me like a mother who takes off her baby's diaper and replaces it with hearts dancing nonstop at a happy disco in the sun.