Robert Berrouët-Oriol

Linguist, specialist in linguistic development and in institutional communication. Poet and critical reader, tracker of writer Franketienne’s work, he has collaborated with the magazines Vice Versa, Moebius, Dérives (Montréal), Europe, Saprifage, Revue noire (Paris), Interculturel de Lecce (Italy), Maison de la Poésie (Namur), Calacs (Ottawa), Quebec Studies (Ohio), Callaloo (Virginia), Chemins critiques and Conjonction (Port-au-Prince). Conference speaker invited several times to CIEF (Conseil international d’études francophones), Robert Berrouët-Oriol is equally the author of the first theoretical study on the exploratory concept of «migrant and metisse writing» in Québec, as well as articles on the romanesque fiction of Émile Ollivier, Pierre Nepveu, Dany Laferrière, Jean-Claude Charles, etc. He has published Lettres urbaines (poetry), followed by Le dire-à-soi (1987) and, over the course of years, several texts and poems in magazines, including English, Portuguese and Catalan translations. His Thoraya, d’encre le champ (poetry, 2005), was admirably rendered into English by the translator of René Depestre and Edwidge Danticat, Carrol Coates, of Bighamton University, under the title of Thòraya, the ink field (poetry, 2007). Several poem sequences pulled from Thoraya, d’encre le champ and from En haute rumeur des siècles have just been translated in Catalan for Barcelona’s international book fair and des Noches de poesia (Poetry nights), in the collective anthology published, as a Spain/Quebec coedition, in December 2008, under the title Troc paroles/Troc de paraules. With En haute rumeur des siècles, Robert Berrouët-Oriol offers his third book of poetry, his most successfully completed and most demanding musical partition.