« Writing, yes, but why? »

Jan 1
2 min read

Writing to express oneself? Writing to be read? Writing to teach? Writing to communicate? Writing to make people dream? Writing to help? Writing to heal? Writing to inform? Writing to tell a story? Writing to emerge from the abyss and bring order to the quagmire? Writing to break solitude? Writing to populate our emptiness with characters and words. Writing to inhabit a place without living in it? Writing to open up the space of care and enter the transitional space (in the sense of Winnicott and Ouanassi Younsi)? Writing to color beings, objects, landscapes, sensations, or to bring into the light of day something that is hidden? (Anne Hébert)

It is true that words can heal wounds.

In this regard, Nathalie Salmon-Hudry explores the magic of words in order to perceive freedom. The blank page has become her laboratory, she declares, to give meaning to her life, to write truthfully far from preconceived ideas and prejudices, to defuse the drama of disability, to escape boredom, to attempt to change her life, to claim a place in this society, and to break her solitude.

As for me,

I want …

To write to tell you all those things I never told you

Things I had set aside

To write to tell you the other side of life’s mountain

A side I had ignored

To write to encourage you and glimpse hope

Hope I had tasted

To write to whisper my quests to you in the face of despair

Despair I had confronted

To write to reassure you and soften difference

Difference I had battled

To write to urge you on and engage trust

Trust I had shaped

I turn to poetry and prose, and I realize that I am deeply drawn to this form of literature, and I do not understand why.

This form of expression intrigues me, and I attempt—just as Anne Hébert so eloquently expressed it, and in vain—to explain it, to situate it, to grasp it at its source and along its inner journey. Poetry is a form of expression grafted into the heart like an unknown land, she says.

Captivated by the singularity of this world, I decide to explore this heart, this unknown land.

A little higher, a little lower

I want to go even further

Toward the unknown and the absolute of my ideas

Where thoughts either frighten or embolden me

A little higher, a little lower

It is beautiful

This universe

A little higher, a little lower

I want to go even further

Toward the abyss and the depths of my feelings

Where gestures and words move me