Winner, Governor General's Award for Poetry

Shortlisted, Governor General's Award for Translation

An elegant testimony to the beautiful and the good, Serge Patrice Thibodeau's One pays homage to the vibrancy and vigor of life, backdropped against the precarious immediacy of the everyday.

From the tiny trunk of opening lines taken from Paul Valéry, Thibodeau unpacks a vision of human consciousness that exists in a state of singular wonder, creating a universe that is at once faithful and ever-changing like the tidal bore — the landscape of mascaret. Thibodeau boldly blends anecdotes, pop-ups, leitmotifs, ecological awareness, and the inner world in variations on the theme of wholeness.

Serge Patrice Thibodeau is the author of a dozen collections of poetry, including Le quatuor de l'errance and Seul on Est, both of which won the Governor General's Award for poetry. He has also written numerous essays and, in 2004, an oratorio with composer Pierre Michaud entitled Odysséa, which commemorated the 400th anniversary of the founding of Acadie.

In addition to his two Governor General's Awards, Thibodeau has received numerous other honours, including the Prix France-Acadie in 1991, the Prix Edgar-Lespérance in 1994 and the Grand Prix du Festival international de la poésie de Trois-Rivières. He has also received the prestigious Prix Émile-Nelligan, the only Acadian to ever receive this award.

Thibodeau is the editorial director of Éditions Perce Neige in Moncton, NB. His poems have been translated into fourteen languages.

Serge Patrice Thibodeau's profile page

Jo-Anne Elder was a member of the Romance Languages Department in 1990-1991. Since then, she has taught French part-time and more recently has taught in the Gender Studies Program. Active as a writer, translator, and editor, she wrote Postcards from Ex-Lovers (Broken Jaw Press, 2005) and has translated many works from French into English. Three of her translations — a novel (Tales from Dog Island: St. Pierre et Miquelon, Killick, 2002) and two books of poems (Beatitudes, Goose Lane, 2007, and One, Goose Lane, 2009) — were shortlisted for Governor General's Awards. She is editor of la revue ellipse magazine, a journal devoted to Canadian literature in translation.

Jo-Anne Elder's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Translation
• Winner, Governor General's Award for Poetry

"Writing in the meditative tradition of Valéry, Bachelard, and Bonnefoy, Serge Patrice Thibodeau creates a heightened, musical engagement with the landscapes both present and remembered."

Don McKay

"Thibodeau summons us out of ourselves into a searing attention — to the history, to the land — and translator Jo-Anne Elder faithfully captures that shiver of being in a world that knows far more than we do."

Katia Grubisic