There is the common story of Oscar winners finding out they were nominated for the prestigious award upon waking up. Turns out, the same story can apply to those nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards; at least it was for Chloé LaDuchesse. She awoke to multiple missed calls and texts reading: ‘congrats on the GG!’
LaDuchesse, former poet laureate for Sudbury, published her second book of French-language poetry in 2021. Called Exosquelette, LaDuchesse told Sudbury.com the book is “about Sudbury and connection with the environment. She specifies that it is not necessarily the natural environment, but the urban environment and the people that inhabit it.
“The people we share the space with,” said LaDuchesse. “And there's some about love relationships, about teenage years, about my relationships, and stories of how we tell stories: who we listen to when we hear a story and who gets to decide, what is the official version.” When the book was released, LaDuchesse wrote in a media release: “Sans les mots pour barder ma peau, je suis invisible. Ce que j’écris me révèle, devient mon exosquelette.” (Without words to clothe my skin, I am invisible. What I write reveals me, becomes my exoskeleton.)
The Governor General’s Literary Awards are given annually to the best English-language and French-language books in each of seven categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama, Young People's Literature (Text), Young People's Literature (Illustrated Books), and Translation (from French to English, and from English to French).
These awards are administered by the Canada Council for the Arts and come with a medallion, as well as a $25,000 cash prize.
LaDuchesse’s first book, Furies, published in 2017 by Mémoire d'encrier, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Awards, honouring literary excellence in Ontario.
Poetry is considered to be ‘subjective’, and like most artistic works, good or bad is irrelevant — the love or hate changes from person to person, depending on their tastes and life experiences. However, LaDuchesse said part of the nomination joy is the feedback she got from those who’ve read her work, and the judges of the contest — whose esteem adds a layer of “validation.”
“After the nomination, lots of people contacted me and said, 'I read your book, I really liked it’,” said LaDuchesse. “That's a lot of fun, because I never know who buys my book and who reads it. And juries, they're professional poets, but they're also people; they have their own sensitivities, and they have their own experience. So it's from that place or that personal experience that they also evaluate my book.”
With Exosquelette, LaDuchesse also adapted her style.
“I really worked on the tone, trying to make longer verses to make it more welcoming, and my writing, so the readers can find themselves,” said LaDuchesse.
But she also said she knows she has no control over what readers will take from the work.
“I just hope they see stuff that they can connect with,” said LaDuchesse.
And as to the difficulty in editing a poem, of knowing the moment it is finally finished? LaDuchesse said her work is about who she is now, rather than who she is at the end of the publishing process.
“In a year from now, I'll be a different person, and I will want to change a word, or the whole thing,” she said. “So I just have to accept that this expresses what I want to express right now, and then move on, because I could rework the poem forever.”
LaDuchesse said the difference between being a poet with one book, and a poet who has written two books, is the difference between a unicycle and a bicycle. One is a little hard to balance on, but once you’ve got it, you can start to pedal. With a bicycle, you can not only pedal, but chart a course. LaDuchesse said that is how it feels to have published her second book of poetry. But now, she has her eye on a new vehicle — a novel.
“I am working on a novel that is almost finished, and I'm editing it for the 10th time,” said LaDuchesse. “It feels like it's a never-ending process.”
Part of that is the length, as most poems are a page or two and a novel is in the hundreds of pages. That, and the time it takes to write.
“I can craft the poem in its entirety, in my head or in a day, but the novel I cannot, my brain is not big enough to fit all the 55,000 words in it and see exactly what is going on at all time,” said LaDuchesse.
She also finds the editing process much different.
“In a book of poetry, each poem is one entity; if you change something in that poem, it won't affect something happening 100 pages from that,” said LaDuchesse. “But a novel, it affects the whole structure, sometimes little details have a lot of ripples in the story. I see it as a puzzle, the kind of a puzzle that makes me want to pull all of my hair,” she said with a laugh.
“But I think I'm going to put all the pieces together sooner than later.”
Though she is very excited about the nomination, LaDuchesse said it’s all a bit surreal still.
“I feel very lucky to be on that list. I'm still a little bit in disbelief,” she said. “I'm excited to see what's next. I hope this will open more doors, but just the attention that it (the book) got is a lot of fun.”
