Blue Flare: Three Contemporary Haitian Poets

Three celebrated poets illuminate the complexity of life in Haiti and its diaspora in the 21st century, particularly for women, in this exceptional and unprecedented trilingual collection. In velyne Trouillots sensual poems about love and yearning, she asks repeatedly in what language should I speak to you? Marie-Clie Agnant addresses poverty, pain, death, but also the pleasures of passion. Maggy De Costers concise and personal poems explore the world its nature, light, wind and, sometimes, political themes. Together, these poems navigate between an impulse to capture gently these moments of light (De Coster) and the very different insistence that we see how pain sits at ground level / at times charging like a beast (Agnant). The original poems in French and Haitian Kreyl appear facing the English translations by Danielle LeGros Georges. Agnant is the 2023 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.