Écrits pour jours de pluie – Barbara Ferreres

Auteure, poète et photographe, Sainte Marie la Mer (66140)

Militant texts

  • Makenzy Orcel, La nuit des terrasses et Caverne suivi de Requiem – Quand la mort et le spleen Baudelairien débordent dans les flots d’un hommage à la nuit

    ,
    Makenzy Orcel, La nuit des terrasses et Caverne suivi de Requiem – Quand la mort et le spleen Baudelairien débordent dans les flots d’un hommage à la nuit

    Review du recueil de Makenzy Orcel – une poésie en prose atypique

    La nuit des terrasses et Caverne suivi de Cadavres est un recueil de poésie contemporaine regroupant trois oeuvres du poète haitien Makenzy Orcel, que je découvre à l’occasion de cette réédition des éditions la Contre allée pour la collection la Sentinelle. J’ai tout de suite plongée dans cette oeuvre crue, où la nuit est le théâtre de décès et d’amours qui voient le vin se mélanger au sang, instant éphémère où les passions d’un temps se jouent de manière intense, la mort toujours au tournant. Le feu des rituels dionysiaques se mêlent dans Cadavres à la froideur de l’eau et de la mort, représentant la nature multiples des soirées passées par le(s) narrateurs, à la fois fête, requiem et champ de bataille non sans dans Terrasses rappeler au lecteur la terrible soirée des attentats du Bataclan. Quant à la Caverne suivie d’une méditation sur la mort, j’hésiterai presque à évoquer la référence à l’allégorie de la caverne de Platon sur notre compréhension toujours incomplète de la vie, tant elle semble évidente.

    Je ne sais que retenir de ce recueil car j’ai envie d’en retenir chaque phrase, chaque mot, sans pour autant avoir l’impression de lui faire honneur par la présente critique. Il s’en est que je suis infiniment reconnaissante envers la Contre Allée d’avoir réédité ces textes essentiels, qui ont toute la force du classique en devenir. Je pensais l’avoir choisi par hasard; mais je pense que c’est la force de ce texte unique qui s’est imposée sur mon chemin. Si vous hésitez encore, je ne peux que vous en recommander vivement la lecture; s’étendre sur une analyse aussi superficielle ne risquerait qu’au contraire de vous détourner de cet ouvrage fort, dont chaque lettre mérite d’être analysée sous toutes ses coutures.

    Informations complémentaires sur l’oeuvre

    Préface de Gisèle Sapiro, sociologie de la littérature directrice de recherche au CNRS et directrice d’études à l’EHESS.
    Éditions La Contre-Allée pour la présente édition, collection La Sente (2023), édition anniversaire pour les 15 ans de la maison d’édition, format poche. Regroupe La nuit des terrasses, collection La Sentinelle (2015) et Caverne suivi de Cadavres, collection la Sentinelle (2017), lauréat du prix littéraire des lycéens et apprentis d’Île de France en 2018.
    ISBN 978-2-376650-90-4

    Goodreads – Babelio – Gleeph


  • Thinking your disabled self outside of a career

    ,

    Thinking your disabled self outside of a career

    What is your career plan?

    If there’s one thing that you can’t really speak about when you’re just becoming disabled, and especially with people who are not disabled themselves, it is the fact  that you are most likely grieving ever – or at least, for longer than they think – having a career. Whoever’s asking me what is my career plan right now, the answer is most likely to be that I do not have a career plan right now, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. I have projects I am working on and goals I am hoping to achieve, but it’s most likely that listing them (even if they imply taxable activities) will make people uncomfortable and ask what I’m going for long term. This coming at a time when I am recovered enough to be able to at least list activities that won’t lead to an awkward silence. 

    Disability in a capitalist society

    Work defined value

    If there is a thing I learnt the hard way becoming disabled, is that we live in a society where your value is defined not only on the kind of career you are actively chasing (on top of the job you already have), but also on your ability to do so. Anything else is met with an awkward silence, at best because the other person didn’t consider that you weren’t for an answer, at worst because they are putting you in the reject kind of their brain – and really, we can’t blame the first category. Everything in our everyday lives revolves around you being an active and working member of society, the two being most of the time at best unconsciously linked. 

    Learning self-acceptance

    One of the eye-opening discussion I had on the subject was during my stay at the outpatient ward, where I met other people that were grieving the fact they wouldn’t be working ever again. For most of them this realisation was difficult, as most people without disabilities don’t understand why you don’t at least try, because the worst that can happen is you ending your contract. No. The worst that can happen is the psychward. Resetting the timing of your recovery. The narrative mainstream media is so cluttered with so called ‘’success stories’’ from disabled people outdoing their sickness and even crossing the boundaries of what is possible for a led people that they tend to forget that this isn’t a fight or a try to outdo everyone, but a process of learning to live with yourself.

    Seeing outside the box – disability and work

    In fact, I would say a win is finding your value outside of usual expectations and people that support you in your journey in this world were nothing is made to accommodate people with different realities, nor considerate them in any other way than a problem to fix. Sometimes, it is better healthwise to think outside of a career or as a non-working person, as not doing so destroyed my self-esteem. There is value in other things, too. 

    Barbara Ferreres


  • 04/03/2023 – « Never a frown, with golden brown »

    , , , , ,
    04/03/2023 – « Never a frown, with golden brown »

    You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

    If I were to write my autobiography, The Strangler’s « Golden Brown » sweet refrain would immediately come to my mind as an opening sentence. I am of Mediterranean Spanish decent and my skin turns golden in the summer. My dad’s all year. We never argue, and I never feel mad when I can enjoy the sea, the sandy colour, and like the author, a hit of heroin. Never a frown, I will be found making music, poetry, texts. But it’s not necessarily a good thing. You need get mad sometimes. I am someone who gets mad easily. I just stop when I take too much, stop doing anything, stop doing a fuss because I am just sleeping my life away, everyday. In the end, there’s not only never a frown, but never a sound. It almost took my life. I could have went from looking for peace, to resting in peace.

    The fact it plays such a huge part in my creative world right now, but also my life – some person even denying me my dying experience because I am still alive, the audacity! – I feel it would be a good start for an autobiography. It started a fair share or arguing, crying, lying, and family trauma. I’m just getting over it, and I did not quite finish the process, so if it were to start now, I would start with this, and explain how the lack of care for my mental health and late neurodivergency diagnosis as well as late disability acknowledgement played a huge part in having to find peace in the brown sands. And while it’s not every addict story, I know a fair share of autistic and adhd (audhd) people who ended up facing life threatening addiction behaviour because getting care is even more tiring than suffering the consequences of being left to deal with it in the wild.