Rosanna Puyol BoraleviD'l'or

D’l’or is a suite of poems, the first book by Rosanna Puyol Boralevi, who also founded the Brook publishing house. It’s a text that speaks of translation as a round trip rather than a single ticket, an oscillation, a social space grappling with everyday life, the discussions we have, the songs we listen to, the gestures we observe.

In D’l’or, language is in flux, like a collective translation workshop where everyone projects a different meaning onto the words. Language is constructed by many, within a community of shared artistic and political interests, whose words Rosanna records to better understand how a common language is constructed. She invents, “enlarges the common space of language” – to use Nanni Balestrini’s term in Les invisibles.

The author describes bodies; bodies in a common space going about different activities. She uses words to capture the images that are created and vanish before our very eyes, as in the practice of drawing live models. She dares to use neologisms, crossing French and English. Rosanna talks explicitly about gender issues, describing sex scenes where the inequality of relationships is questioned. It is also a book of rupture, where love and friendship allow for a reinvention of relationships and form.

In D’l’or, the precious material is found in a hubbub of voices and exchanges. The writing moves back and forth between rapid line breaks and blocks, depending on the experience being captured. Motifs recur: birds, water, music. Quotations interrupt the words and distance the reader from reality – at the same time as encouraging us to dive into the flow of the text.

Rosanna Puyol (b. Paris, 1991) is a poet, translator and publisher. Co-founder of Brook Editions, she has published translations of engaged texts inspired by feminist and anti-racist struggles, as well as poetic and research literature in the form of essays, manifestos, poems, novels and art criticism. She collaborates with artists on exhibitions, video programmes and performance projects, and organises reading groups, writing and translation workshops, often with friends.

Cover design: Aminata Labor