With “Unfinished, alive“, the poet Pierrine Poget offers an experience of the body, both the female body and bodies in general, in the minutiae and turmoil of the sensations of adult life.

The book begins with an experience of abuse which is emerged from with the help of years gone by, friendship and reflection. This reflection becomes possible thanks to a note stumbled upon. The text superimposes layers of memory by drawing on a wide range of cultural references, from Gilles Deleuze to Claire Parnet, from Corot to Vuillard, and from Berthe Morisot to Heidi Bucher, while toying with the creative possibilities of collage.

 Whether auditory or visual, the materials on which the narrator draws to weave her work are rich. Notes found in old notebooks. Descriptions of paintings discovered in museums. Analyses based on dictionary definitions. Fragments that become aphorisms. Children’s words. Quotes from philosophers. Extracts from an intimate letter from one woman to another. Immersive seaside landscapes. Mentions of a past once possible, lived by someone other than oneself…

The material composing the book makes it lean towards a very free-form essay. The freedom of a language that is beautifully crafted but no less delicate, with poetic sensitivity, tackles questions as intimate as they are universal: what is childhood? Motherhood? The beginning of language? The passing of time? Memory? The vacillation of desire? Shame and rediscovered power? Freedom? What is writing?

This uncertainty about the self in the world, which drives the author to philosophical – and sensual – enquiry, gives rise to a luminous style of writing that is above all a matter of sensation. From Briance, where the narrator returns to her childhood home, we retain the attraction, the magnetism of the sea and the silent presence of the women who preceded her within these walls. Of motherhood, we experience the body forced to be vigilant, available and attentive, but also the discovery of a powerful otherness in the throes of wild germination.

“Unfinished, alive” is a story of subdued beauty, in the precision of the words chosen, the balance of stylistic devices, the sometimes hypnotic rhythm of the sentences, and in the universal acuity of the themes addressed and the necessity from which they spring.

Text by Alice Bottarelli

Title

Inachevée, vivante

Publisher

La Baconnière

Translation rights

Laurence Gudin, laurence.gudin@editions-baconniere.ch 

Publication date

February 2024

Pages

112

ISBN

9782889601318

Awards

Nominated for the Prix Jacques-Allano

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Author

Pierrine Poget

Pierrine Poget was born in Geneva in 1982. She has released three volumes of poetry, including Fondations, which was published by Empreintes and won her the C.F. Ramuz poetry prize. Warda s’en va, her first work of prose, published by Éditions La Baconnière in 2021, was well received by critics and shortlisted for the Prix Médicis. Inachevée, vivante, published this year, is in the running for the Prix Jacques-Allano.

Photo: © Irina Popa