Evenings at Loose Ends

Author: Gérald Godin. Translated by Judith Cowan | ISBN: 1550650157 : 9781550650150 | Format: Paperback | Size: 155x230mm | Pages: 112 | Weight: .148 Kg. | Published: IPG (Véhicule Press) – January 1991 | Availability: In Print | Subjects: Poetry texts & anthologies

When he was alive

Gérald Godin embraced poetry and politics with great passion and appetite. Godin was a journalist, a Parti Québecois cabinet minister, and first and foremost, a poet. This is the first of his seven books of poetry to appear in English.

“He writes with enviable directness and simplicity, yet achieves surreal scope.” – Ottawa Citizen

Gérald Godin

(1938-94). Canadian poet and politician who was one of the founders of the literary journal Parti pris. He vigorously practises the use of joual in his own poetry, especially Les Cantouques (1967), as advocated by the review, but in his case without any pejorative intention or effect. He has a natural delight in popular speech of all kinds, and has developed his own inventive mixture of joual and other registers of Quebec French to produce a rich, accessible poetry of frequently infectious musicality. His work expresses social anger and compassion, but also love and tenderness. Poems up to 1986 are collected in Ils ne demandaient qu’à brûler (1987). He was elected to the Quebec National Assembly in 1976 as a member of the nationalist Parti Québécois and occupied several ministerial posts in successive Quebec governments.