Trois-Rivières, September 5, 2007) The Félix Leclerc Foundation is pleased to announce that Georgette Leblanc has been awarded the 2007 Félix Leclerc Poetry Prize for her book Alma publlished by Éditions Perce-Neige in October 2006. Leblanc will receive $1000 as well as the collected work of Félix Leclerc. Her invitation to appear at the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival augments the value of the purse by $400.

Chairing the jury, Nathalie Leclerc said of the prize-winning work : « What marks this collection, what makes it ring with the greatest compassion, is how LeBlanc successfully weaves and spotlights the tight relationship that exists between the collective identity, its habitat, its historical framework and the shape of its language. Alma’s landscape is rich with beautiful and evocative images ; it is a well of lasting and palpable emotion.»

Pierrot veut qu’on se débarrasse des pissenlits
pour planter des roses et des tulipes
il dit que des fleurs ça parle
et que des pissenlits tout ce que ça dit

’est qu’ej sons esclaves
moi je comprends point comment ce qu’une fleur
une fleur sauvage qui fait ça qu’elle veut
peut être esclave

(Pierrot wants us to pull out the dandelions to plant roses and tulips instead; he says that flowers speak and that dandelions, all they utter are slave-like sounds. Me, I don’t understand why a flower, a wild flower that does whatever it wants could be a slave.)

Here, poetry, like a gift in hand, brings with it a dialogue to carry forward for generations. Alma beautifully marries the Acadian language with that of poetry to produce a narrative that lives symbiotically with its Voice. Luring readers back into the epicentre of the Crash of 1929 and World War II, LeBlanc poetically revisits Acadian history while simultaneously searing into   memory the endearing character of the Acadian woman, Alma, who dreams of freedom for herself and for her children.

un jour j’apprendrai à voler moi itou.
(one day, me too, I will learn to fly) 

« With this declaration,  it is all of Acadian soil that trembles... » added Leclerc.

The Félix Leclerc Prize was established in October 1997 by the Félix Leclerc Foundation in collaboration with the Les Forges Foundation on the 10th anniversary of the death of the poet. The prize is awarded biennally at the opening ceremony of the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival and was created to honour the memory, spirit and literary output of the writer. The jury this year included poets Isabelle Forest and Pierre Labrie, and was chaired by Nathalie Leclerc.

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