Virginie Guillemette

Virginie Guillemette Poems

Virginie Guillemette Biography

It was at some point in late summer in Bromptonville, Quebec Canada, located in the northeastern reaches of North America, in the Western Hemisphere of planet Earth,1976 in which an x chromasome and a Y chromasome from my mother and father, Ginette and Pierre Guillemette, respectively, irreversibly fused, thus creating a small conscious blip in the the radar of the universe...and after naming said blip 'Virginie Helena Marie Guillemette' (those catholics and thier fondness for long nomenclatures! ...) proceeded to do thier best (which is a hopeful statement on my part, not a demonstrable fact) to raise this small creature in the Post-Modern culturally conflicted ambiguously post-hippie decades of the 80's and 90's. This experiment in reproductive and cultural perpetuation has been met with mixed reviews, some deeming it relatively successful, others less so, with the majority expressing a random indifference suitable to those with whom one has little acquaintance and attachment. It has been made known to this person that the question of the relative success/failure of my conscious experience in this universe at this time has become quite questionable, and the very purpose and or justification for this existence has yet to clarify itself in my life. *Note* some of you might have hoped for a comment or two about my process or approach. So here goes; I describe it best like this...the words in me for most of my life were like a deep deep well, and if you had walked over the firm yet spongey turf of my psyche, then, you could not have sensed that there were roiling tides below, wet angry wells of words words words. It took an earthquake to loose them and now that they're here I'm afraid I'm really just along for the ride. I spent 27 years holding firm below a perfect, level world the words that coursed through inner tributaries...it wasn't until Life shook me to the core with a series of traumas that I realized I had some things to say. A Voice. (If you must know what those are...I discovered my husband of 10 years had been party to several 'indiscretions'. A month later my mother suddenly became afflicted with Liver Cancer and died 6 weeks later. Hard enough, but I happened to have a lot of 'mommie issues' if you know what I mean...) My voice is often angry. Those seem to be the words in the biggest hurry to get out. Though I am not an angry person, as most who know me would testify. Maybe that's because I let my angry words mark my page and not the 'chaire et sang' folks that move about in my life. And words...wow! what intoxicants! what power! my poems often don't make sense bc their value is more than the sum of their parts. I shy from narration bc I feel it stifles the inner experience of the reader. i like the idea of varying interpretations, letting the reader inser meaning where meaning is most needed for them. I like the play of odd word con-joinings, odd rhythms, and things than make one slightly uncomfortable. I like the viscous quality of word imagery, sarcasm and unexpected (surprise!) context switches. I've been criticized for being cryptic, cliché, and repetitive. If you read my work and respond in this way, well then I guess I'm just not your flavor. But my voice is a true one, and truer than the one I often use daily, face to face. And an earnest voice in writing is step one in mobilizing the reader. On another note, I hate reading long-winded, over-bloated tedious poetry...gratuitous poetry...and self-satisfied wordsmithery, so I write relatively short word arrangements that please me. If you like long elaborate testimonies to the grand and noble art of literate self-preening or if you have hours on end to scroll over 13 verses of idyllic imagery then perhaps other writers will please you better than me. I know several on here and will be happy to direct you to them. (I'm being caustic, I know. I'm sorry. Disclaimer; I know of and have read many a brilliant and beautiful work of poetry that filled a good number of pages and required some amount of sustenance and sleep to get through to the end. I'm sacrificing diplomacy for cheap-shot humor and to make a mild point...) As for the criticism of being cryptic, I freely confess; Guilty! If you're determined, however, you can easily decode my lexicon, as many themes repeat. It's my way of baring all, but not to all who read. It's fun and I get a great deal of pleasure from it.)

The Best Poem Of Virginie Guillemette

Basquiat Dream

A black smattering of voodoo goo
Shell shock eyes that won’t
Let light through
You are dark as the pitch pools
Phantasms and ghouls
Empty energy
in shrouded heart jewels

Heart of Darkness
lie still in me
stillness in stillborn
like half-formed
cacophony.
Bled
Like Anansi trick thread
Trip
Slip
Fled.
The ghosts of what I’ve been
Beating out through djembe skin
They win.

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