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Delft Blue & Objects of the World: Archives I and II
Louise Warren and Karen McPherson (Translator)
Guernica Editions, Fall 2013
266 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781550717990
ISBN10: 1550717995
English
Translated from the French
$15.00 Canada, $15.00 US
Read more from the Essential Translations Series
Archives are often depicted as musty repositories, museum cellars, warehouses shoring up retaining walls against forgetfulness and the inevitable erosions of time. Objects deposited in the archives are tucked away for safekeeping. But Louise Warren's archives are not file boxes or document lockers. They are not relegated to closed cabinets in locked rooms. They are where writing goes and what writing does. Delft Blue & Objects of the World represent the first two of Warren's archival trilogy.
I have always felt free in this solitude as I am nowhere else. Solitude is a room. I think that this retreat, this expression of self in solitude, manifests itself very early and that this need can be a sign of self-affirmation in the imaginary, a path toward art.
In these Archives, Warren’s essays examine not only her personal experiences, but also the seductive fusion of her own practices to those of other artists. Her fragments on art and poetry, on exhibits and artist studios trace the portrait of a writer who defines herself in relation to what she sees and what she writes, a writer for whom an inter-artistic project is necessary if one is to grasp the sources and the force of creation.
Kirsty Bell (Mount Allison University)
Louise Warren lives not far from the lake that nourishes her work. That silence like an overturned bowl. The bluish luminosity of a certain dawn. The particular sound of footsteps crossing the ice. Each time I open this book (Objets du monde), I step outside myself in order to enter the world of poetic reflection.
Dany Laferrière
One of Quebec’s most delicate and subtle poets … We note the poietic energy at the dynamic and tensional heart of Bleu de Delft, in which we see all the fine-bonedness, all the serene-despite-all, ever firmly questing vigour of a perception and an expression that explain why the work of a great artist such as Alexandre Hollan can hold her attention.
Michael Bishop
When it is a book that you have loved, you need more than one reading. The most luminous book may arise from a place of darkest melancholy. If the book seems light it is because the author bore the weight of the writing, like the sufferings of the world. I don’t read a book, I converse with a writer. And when it is someone who touches me, I want to spend time with that person again. Let me put it simply : I take great pleasure in being with Louise Warren (Objets du monde : Archives du vivant). In her work there is both the darkness and the light.
Dany Laferrière
Books by Louise Warren
Books by Karen McPherson