Friday, April 09, 2010

Hands on: Lise Gaboury-Diallo



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This image is imperfect. It does no justice to a thoroughly elegant writer whose books are all lovely, thanks in part to the artworks of her father and daughter, architect/artist and artist respectively...but also thanks to her words.

I took a bad picture because I was pleasantly tired after a long day but also after a great trio of readings from the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry nominees but Lise had the same cast to her face...so I'm going to use it.

When I asked her if I could take a picture of her hands, she looked down at them and said, "But I haven't had a manicure or anything. They're just my normal every day hands..."

After I assured her that was precisely what I wanted, she looked down one last time at her hands, rubbed the callus on the side of her index finger and muttered that it was her "writer's bump."

And then she smiled. Tiredly. Pleasantly.

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Née à Saint-Boniface (Manitoba), Lise Gaboury-Diallo est professeure de langue française et des littératures francophones au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface (MB). Elle est l'auteure de 6 recueils de poésie, et édité Sillons: hommage à Gabrielle Roy (Éditions du Blé, 2009).

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