Matthieu Corpataux pushes granny into poetry

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Emma is a grandmother like any other. She spends time in the garden, cooks for her grandchildren, often thinks about her late husband, Léon, worries about the swallows and the neighborhood cats or the weather and diabetes. And this simple old lady's life—her grandmother, ours, except for a few details—deserved not a poem, but a book of her own, according to the Swiss poet Matthieu Corpataux. This approach gives rise to Emma au jardin , published in paperback by Editions de la Contre allée this fall, two years after its publication in large format by Empreintes.

The collection, the second by the Fribourg author after Sucres in 2020, reads almost like a short novel. It is built on a succession of short poems, most of them rhythmic quatrains. For example: " Faced with the rebellious herbs / He who will first give in / Who - the traitor - will capitulate / Is his right knee." The verses overflow with tenderness to capture the daily routine of old age, made up of small dramas (the body giving way, a burglary) and simple pleasures (flowers). When it is not a few flashbacks, which shake up wandering thoughts.

The Swiss poet, also editor and director of the Textures literary festival in Fribourg, offers in this work a poetry that