Leo the bookseller
Photo: Radio-Canada / Hamza Abouelouafaa
This week, discover Léo, a passionate lover of literature who opens the bookstore with friends A book of one’s own, a nod to Virginia Woolf. Located in the heart of rue Laurier Est, this space aims to bring people together, “a place of openness, discovery and discussion,” he says. The Prix de la création team asked him to tell us about his current favorites in terms of poetry collections.
” Today, more than ever, we need social binders. We need to see each other, to exchange, to take each other in our arms. There is in books this magnificent potential to find oneself in the words of others. […] words that can console us. »
Three books of poetry to read, according to Leo:
The literary prescriptions of Léo the bookseller
Photo: Radio-Canada / Hamza Abouelouafaa
Yesterday is violenceby Charlotte Francoeur, OMRI, September 21, 2020
Editor’s Summary: Yesterday is violence tells the story of a failed suicide attempt, a desired but unattainable death. It is a true declaration of love from a daughter to her mother, a great survivor of the ice of the St. Lawrence River.
” This is a book that really touched me. He approaches the mother-daughter relationship with finesse. It’s magnificent, beautiful, touching and it’s also a graphic work since this publishing house collaborates with visual artists. »
The black unicornby Audre Lorde, a translation by Gerty Dambury, L’Arche, October 10, 2021
Publisher’s Summary: The Collection black unicorn, written in 1978, occupies a special place among his poetic writings. The poet appears in all the facets of her femininity, as daughter, mother, lover, poet, activist. These love poems evoke the apogee of a desire, imbued with rage and a sensuality that the acute awareness of the discrimination suffered will not manage to curb.
” Audre Lorde is a seminal African-American author. His poetry is imbued with eroticism. It’s majestic, very carnal, sensual, sexual. His pen is very political. »
ancestralby Goliarda Sapienza, Le Tripode, June 4, 2021
Publisher’s summary: The intensity of the melancholic destiny and the desire that inhabit Goliarda Sapienza sheds a deeper light on all of his singular work. We find there, in a moving way, summoned by his lyrical voice, the decisive figures of his parents and the personal mythology on which his life will unfold thereafter.
” As long as you fall in love with his work, you are part of his fan club. Everything she writes is sublime. Very feminist, she persisted in writing in a macho Italy where no editor wanted to sign her. To read! »
How do you imagine the first people to walk into your bookstore?
” I imagine them open to change, I imagine them as they are, as they come, as they leave. I want us to get to know each other. »
The opening of the bookstore A book of one’s own (New window) will take place on May 28, 2022 at 1575 Laurier Avenue East.
A veritable springboard for Canadian writers, the Prix de la création Radio-Canada are open to anyone who writes, whether amateur or professional. Each year, they reward the best stories (experienced stories), short stories and unpublished poems submitted to the competition.
Do you write poems? Send us your unpublished texts by May 31, 2022.
Reference-ici.radio-canada.ca