Ship of Gold

A legend of 19th century French Canadian poetry, Émile Nelligan was only 16 when he fell under the influence of Baudelaire and Rimbaud and began writing taut, confidently surrealistic poems, shot through self-lacerating melancholy. Three years later, when a mental collapse led to his life-long institutionalization in 1899, he had already produced an impressive body of work. Translating Nelligan’s “essential” poems, along with a sharp introduction contextualizing his legacy as one of the “first poets to write openly about suicide, neurosis, and psychological breakdown,” Marc di Saverio has given us a rivetingly fresh version of Nelligan for a new generation.

AUTHOR

Marc Di Saverio

Marc di Saverio hails from Hamilton, Canada. His poems and translations have appeared in such outfits as Maisonneuve, CNQ, Hazlitt, Event, and The Fiddlehead. In Issue 92 of Canadian Notes and Queries, Di Saverio’s Sanatorium Songs (2013) was hailed as “the greatest poetry debut from the past 25 years.” In 2016, he received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2017, his work was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, his debut became a best seller in both Canada and the United States, and he published his first book of translations: Ship of Gold: The Essential Poems of Émile Nelligan (Vehicule Press). His epic poem, Crito Di Volta, was released in 2020 to great acclaim.

Reviews

Praise for Marc di Saverio:

Di Saverio is a poet whose imagination belongs in the company of Blake, Pound, Layton, Rimbaud, Nelligan, among others. –Darren Bifford, Arc Magazine

Hamilton’s Marc di Saverio offers one of the strongest debuts of late in Sanitorium Songs. Primarily collecting sonnets, villanelles, haiku and translations, di Saverio shows a stunning command of these forms and a talent for startling imagery. His translations (of Rimbaud, Baudelaire and others) are masterful, while his original poems show a clear symbolist influence and a sharp, severe musicality. –Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press