Skip to main content

Jason Camlot Turns 40 Today


Jason Camlot (pictured above) turns 40 today.

Eyewear wishes him a very happy birthday.

If music and thought are the twin poles of poetry (with wit somewhere sliding between) then he's your man. Both a musician and a literary scholar, Camlot is equally at home in the bistros near Duluth, singing his own songs, or scouring mansucripts in the British Libary for arcane Victoriana.

Jason and I edited Language Acts: Anglo-Qu̩bec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century, to be launched at the 9th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival / 9i̬me Festival litt̩raire internationale de Metropolis bleu, Friday, April 27, 20h00 Р21:30, Salle St-Charles, H̫tel Delta Centre-ville, 777 rue University, (M̩tro Square-Victoria).

Below is a poem that well evidences his virtuosity - a lyric he wrote in California, translated into French.


Charlotte Gainsbourg

J’ai vu Charlotte Gainsbourg
En Californie
Adossé à une voiture,
Elle avait l’air gentille.
Charlotte Gainsbourg
En Californie,
J’ai admiré ses yeux
Et son visage,
De loin.
Je l’aurais bien saluée
Mais j'étais trop gêné.
Dire que je pourrais mourir ce soir.

Charlotte Gainsbourg
Tout près de San Francisco,
Je me demande où elle ira
Après le ‘show’.
Je ne connais pas cette ville,
Mais elle est charmante
Vu de loin,
Vu du ciel.

Mais son père savait écrire une chanson.
Son père chantait mal, mais il était plus fort
Que je ne le serai jamais,
Aussi longtemps que je serais dans ce pays.

Je ne suis pas d’ici, elle non plus.
Je veux dire, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Avec son air solitare.
en Californie--S'il vous plaît, emmenez-moi d'ici--
Je pourrais mourir ce soir.
Et je ne peux plus me passer des cigarettes.
Je ne peux plus me passer des jeunes mignettes.

On exige que je lise
Hawthorne
Cet auteur du dix-neuvième siecle.

On exige que je lise
Un livre de Nathaniel Hawthorne
Un roman
Qu’il a ecrit en exile.

Voila Charlotte Gainsbourg
En Californie,
Adossé a une voiture.


poem by Jason Camlot
translated by the author with help from Patrick Leroux and Stephane Paquette
taken from his recent collection Attention All Typewriters!
photo credit: David McGimpsey, 2005

http://www.dcbooks.ca/AttentionAllTypewriters.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...
1 comment
Read more