Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    My Dinosaur
    My Dinosaur
    My Dinosaur
    Ebook128 pages27 minutes

    My Dinosaur

    By François Turcot

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    There's a real fascination with fathers in Québécoise literature, and this recurring persona populates fiction, films, and the stories people tell of their families and themselves. Thus, it's not surprising that, as he witnessed his own father's growing frailty, François Turcot-one of Quebec's most celebrated young literary voices-would write his own dedication to his vanished father, entitled My Dinosaur. In this, his first collection of poems to be published in English (and translated by renowned poet Erín Moure), Turcot pays tribute not just to the father, but also to the figure of the son, and to writing itself as key to story, emotion, memory, and history.

    With luminous and lucid writing, Turcot excavates the fossil gaze of his father in an elated elegy composed of poems both tensed and open, minimalist and talkative, serious and droll, alternating the voice and writings of the father with the fictions and assemblies of the son-reminding us that a man's story can only be told by assembling the shreds and bits that have been accumulated over the course of our lives.

    As a prolonged metaphor for the endurance of memory, Turcot's meticulous assembly in My Dinosaur is a tribute to all our Dads.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookThug
    Release dateApr 2, 2015
    ISBN9781771662314
    My Dinosaur

    Related to My Dinosaur

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Five Poems
      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      May 1, 2022

      —after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621 They’ve made a monster of me, marring my namefor eternity. I’m not Delilah,but Laila. I loved him. Each night, in bed, after our bodies became one body, he would succumb to sleep, resting hi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Without the adventof Stockholm Syndrome,how could I havelearned to love myself so much? I’m asking Godand New York, can anyonehelp me? (An all-but-audible “or else.”) The captain’s chair:it’s beginning to smella little too much like me. Again.But the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      “the possibility of joy in the face of death” —Georges Bataille Couldn’t get “I” nor “we” to settle down, stay unresolved in time in crisp white burial shirts could do bouts of theatrical weeping weary though exacting avant garde gestures of the carp

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2019

      Santo Jesus, did you have a jeweled number?Did you play spin-the-bottle in your day?What colors and configurations of glass? I imagine there were no remedies for cleft palatesbut that people loved their penned animals:brushed their fur and picked the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Fragrant

      Jan 18, 2022

      Fragrant
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2020

      after Agnes Martin We had a great timewalking into oblivionbefore dinner unburdened by the windof tinkering conversationa glorious glut of being shut upby implied continuumspun off in ultramarine pieces though I don’t thinkyou can imagineeven a parti

      2 min read

    • Article

      New World

      Aug 2, 2018

      New World
      2 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      When I said, to my mother, What was a goodthing about me as a child?, my mother’sface seemed to unfurl from the center,hibiscus in fast motion, the anthersand flounces springing out with joy. Oh you wereenchanting, she breathed. What do you mean—craz

      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are you ready? I nodded. She slid the needle inand the sick cat, who only a moment before had tried toleap to the floor closed his eyes and exhaled. Andthat’s it, she said a little too brightly, pulling the needle out.That’s it? I asked. That’s all t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Anatomy Of A Search

      Mar 17, 2023

      Anatomy Of A Search
      13 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      The embers of a Thousand YearsUncovered by the HandThat fondled them when they were FireWill stir and understand——from Emily Dickinson’s “1383” Remember when we hurriedourselves into the evening’s sacral blaze: Our coal-covered bridal gownsdrenched i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      Maybe It Won’t Be That Bad

      Dec 9, 2019

      Maybe It Won’t Be That Bad
      4 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      That the semi-circular canal is part of my ear,not a style of Venetian waterway arch,I learned mid-air on a Huffy.That bicycles left long out in the rain split.That prepositions are tricky.That I was made part industrious,part lazy-assed. That descri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2022

      If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say itenough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic, I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting, slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for My Dinosaur

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      My Dinosaur - François Turcot

      MY DINOSAUR

      My Dinosaur

      François Turcot

      translated by Erín Moure

      BookThug 2016

      FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

      PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY UNDER THE TITLE: MON DINOSAURE

      © LA PEUPLADE AND FRANÇOIS TURCOT, 2013

      ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND AFTERWORD

      © 2016 BY ERÍN MOURE

      COVER IMAGE © DIANE CHISHOLM

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. BookThug also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigraption, Communities, for our translation activities.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

      CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Turcot, François, 1977-

      [Mon dinosaure. English]

      My dinosaur / François Turcot ; Erín Moure, translator. — First English edition.

      Translation of: Mon dinosaure.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-77166-230-7 (PAPERBACK).—ISBN 978-1-77166-231-4 (HTML).—

      ISBN 978-1-77166-232-1 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-77166-233-8 (MOBI)

          I. Mouré, Erin, 1955–, translator II. Title. III. Title: Mon dinosaure.

      English.

      PS8639.U66M6613 2016     C841’.6     C2016-900585-2

      C2016-900586-0

      for my dinosaur of a Dad

      parked behind

      The Cinnamon Shops

      Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Hold Tight, Let Go

      Six Weeks Before the Shades

      Meteors

      A Red Line

      Prehistories

      The Deeps

      The Box of Whalebones

      Si Moure traduit Turcot: A Book of Hours becomes a Book of Ours

      Our Dinosaurs

      Author’s Acknowledgements

      Translator’s Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Colophon

      Hold Tight, Let Go

      That was my verdict, six weeks before the shades.

      January had burst December open. I said let go, stockstill and concocting questions. Reminding myself a man’s heart can’t be bared with just one hand.

      Scinded, our words repeat. I heard hold tight, let go, standing like a man pitched forward. Weight on one leg.

      Killing winter in our kitchens, staring at icy roads, I said let go. Dialled his number. At his window in another city, a man answered.

      A voice rose up. Full,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1