you

From poet Chantal Neveu, author of the award-winning collection This Radiant Life, comes a book-length poem that plunges us more deeply into the notion of the idyll and into the polyhedric structure of love.

you demonstrates with exceptional beauty how in the interval between words or verses, language can glimmer, absorb, and refract the changing realities and attractions of an all too human relationship.

Personal autonomy and the formation of “self” are nourished here by multiples—I, you, s/he. The voice in you reclaims life from change and time and affirms it anew.

AUTHOR

Chantal Neveu

CHANTAL NEVEU is the author of several books of poetry, including you; La vie radieuse (This Radiant Life, winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation and the 2021 Nelson Ball Prize); coït (Coït); and Une spectaculaire influence (A Spectacular Influence). She has created numerous interdisciplinary literary works, in Canada and abroad. Her work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has held residencies at Maison de la poésie de Nantes (France), Passa Porta and Villa Hellebosch (Belgium), and Villa Waldberta (Germany). Neveu lives in Montreal.

Reviews

“Chantal Neveu moves to reappropriate writing on love, with precision and balance, and without evading the turmoil…. you is among the texts that quietly renew the relationship between poetry and intimacy.” —Adrien Meignan, Un dernier livre avant la fin du monde (tr. Erín Moure)

“Neveu’s writing sets aside all that might relate to articulation, coordination or subordination, so as to free up only what is indispensable via a fractioned speech.” —Monique Deland, Estuaire (tr. Erín Moure)