The Addressed Poem of the Day

Abstract

The Addressed Poem of the Day Jacques Jouet (bio) Since 1st April 1992, I have been composing poems of the day, a dated, localized poem, freshly produced each day. After a good twenty years, they are legion. The first four years were published in 1999 by P. O. L. as Navet, linge, œil-de-vieux. The next four years, Du jour, came out from the same publishers in November 2013. Over the years, various procedures have been adopted: series of still lifes, portrait-poems, addressed poems, poems while listening to music… On 29th May 2013, I started what will be the final—and unfinishable—procedure in this enterprise, the addressed poem of the day. The idea of the addressed poem of the day is to appeal to as many people as possible, one by one. What hope can a poet writing today have that seven billion human beings will read his pathetic little poems, as if he were a Baudelaire? But another hope might be that all human beings, all of our fellows, common candidates, unknown friends, brothers…will one day have their own poem, written first and foremost for them. This is why I started by picking up the directory of telephone subscribers in the French département of l’Ain (01). They are listed by town. The first one, L’Abergement-Clémenciat, the second one, L’Abergement-de-Varey, and so on. To each and every subscriber, I am sending, by post, a poem. With it, I enclose my address and a brief description of the overall project. It remains to be seen if, in my lifetime, I get to l’Aisne, and then, after France, to Gabon, and after Gabon, to Greece, and so on up to Zimbabwe before starting again with South Africa (Afrique du Sud), with Finland to finish. This might be termed transcendence, in the only form of it that I recognize: the one deriving from very large numbers. It’s unreasonable. So what? At least I’ll have tried. Who knows? I may get some help from other people during my lifetime; then maybe they’ll continue after my death. That makes for a lot of “mays.” So as not to fall into the fatal monotony of a single list, nothing will prevent me, given the right circumstances, from anticipating by covering other fragments of particular territories or groups, thanks to indications from various “pathfinders”. Ain As of 1st October 2013, Jean-Paul Honoré has joined the project by going through the directory of l’Ain (01) backwards: its final town is called Vonnas. We will meet up, some time soon, in the middle of the list. This will occur in the town of Jassans-Riottier. L’Ételon On 16th, 17th and 18th November 2013, Patrick Biau, Gérald Castéras, Jean-Paul Honoré, and Cécile Riou and I addressed a poem to all of the inhabitants of the village L’Ételon (03360). Bourges As writer in residence in Bourges (2014-2015, with the association les mille univers), I addressed over a thousand poems to the inhabitants of that town, with the help of my poet friends and the participants in the workshops I led. (In particular I acknowledge Patrick Biau, Valérie Lotti and Annie Pellet, who were especially productive…) (This series of poems is due to be published by les mille univers.) Valvins In 2015, at the Stéphane Mallarmé Museum in Valvins, Vulaines-sur-Seine in the Seine-et-Marne (77), a group of poets consisting of Benoît Casas, Frédéric Forte, Jean-Paul Honoré, Cécile Riou and I sent six hundred addressed poems to the local inhabitants. Århus In April 2015, in Århus, Denmark, I composed a hundred and one addressed poems in situ, translated into Danish by Steen Bille Jørgensen. (This series of poems is due to be published in a bilingual edition in Denmark.) Victoria In Victoria BC, Canada, in July 2015, a hundred and ten addressed poems were composed by a group of poets made up of Marc Lapprand, Natali Leduc, Cécile Riou and myself. Following Natali Leduc’s suggestion, the common point about...