Just Like Her
Louise Dupré , Erín Moure
May 2011
96 pages | ISBN 978-1-894987-56-1
Just Like Her (Tout comme elle, in French) is a searing and daring work of poetry, written for the theatre, about the inevitability of loss and the enduring nature of love. In four acts Dupré explores the difficult, painful, yet necessary separation of daughter and mother.
The poems are followed by a conversation between Louise Dupré and acclaimed Quebec theatre director Brigitte Haentjens about writing, women, theatre and life. In June 2011, Haentjens will be directing the English-language premiere of the play Tout comme elle at Luminato, the Toronto Festival of Arts + Creativity.
Articles
Aux livres, citoyens! French translations for Bastille Day Reading (Literary Press Group, LPG Staff's Blog, 14/07/2014)
Just Like Her was featured on the Literary Press Group's staff blog as one of the recommended French-translated poetry books.
Reviews
"An emotional logic" (Laurie D. Graha, The Fiddlehead, 28/01/2014)
“The wideness of Dupré’s work comes from the space left between vignettes, the breadth of the leap between moments, which takes on an emotional as opposed to a sequential logic, and which allows the reader to consider her own experience.”
Becoming woman (Amanda Lim, Canadian Literature, 13/03/2012)
"Wry, startling, and brutally honest by turns, Dupré…capture[s] adroitly the myriad complexities, tensions, and contradictions in the construction of femininity.”
'Chubby sonnets' hilarious, brilliant (Jonathan Bell, Winnipeg Free Press, 10/22/2011).
"So theatrical a love is fragile and fraught."
Just Like Her (Shannon Webb Campbell, Telegraph-Journal, 7/30/2011).
"Observational and acute, Dupré struggles with deep wounds, the scars of childhood and a loss of love. The relationship between a mother and daughter is rife with raw emotions – anger, hatred, love, pain. It's both a reflection and a reflector.”
Excerpt
Just Like Her Excerpt
Read an excerpt of Just Like Her by Louise Dupré and translated by Erín Moure
About the Author
Louise Dupré is a poet, novelist and literary critic whose work has appeared extensively in magazines and journals in Canada and abroad, and who has won several prizes. She has published eight collections of poetry including Noir déjà, Tout près and Une écharde sous ton ongle. She has also written two novels, Memoria and The Milky Way, and a collection of short stories, Highwire Summer, all translated in English by Liedewij Hawke. A collection of her poetry, The Blueness of Light, was translated in English by Antonio D’Alfonso. In 2006, Tout comme elle, staged by Brigitte Haentjens, was presented in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa.
About the Translator
Erín Moure is a Montreal poet who writes mainly in English, yet works multilingually and in hybrid forms. Her most recent books are O Resplandor and – in collaboration with Oana Avasilichioaei – Expeditions of a Chimæra. Moure has translated Quebec poets Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels) and Louise Dupré, Galician poet Chus Pato, and Chilean Andrés Ajens into English, as well as Fernando Pessoa from Portuguese. She has published 14 books of her own poetry and 7 books of poetry in translation since 1979. Her translations have been finalists for the Griffin Prize and the Governor General’s Award and she has won the Governor General’s Award, the AM Klein Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and been nominated for the Griffin Prize for her own poetry.
