“Each novel is a quest, writing is a very slow urgency” Jeanne Benameur
“What moves you? To the point of resurfacing after years of upheaval? To the point of forcing you to write, to paint, to tell? What is it that works for you, deep down, at the place where the great silences of a life are played out? When do the words of others become companions of these great silences? Today, for the first time since the beginning of this program, I met an author and poet who first wrote stories before beginning to read them. For her, the alphabet to decipher and represent was the first challenge: then the reading came, outside the house, in these places so important What are municipal libraries?
Jeanne Benameur’s journey resembles her language: everything is aerobatic, smooth and moving. The places are there before us, they are first, the story then settles there and the written words unfold there.
Professor, Jeanne Benameur first published poems, before publishing her first novel, The Residences, published by Actes sud. This is the beginning of a long literary journey, where poems, essays, youth and adult novels mingle, in a joyful melancholy that is immediately recognizable.
Jeanne Benameur arranged to meet me in La Rochelle, under a beautiful winter sun that throws strange colors on the sea. So we met at the bookstore. Ordinary Rebels, where I was expected with a beautiful cheese platter and a famous red wine. For an hour we discussed the traces we leave, in life and in books, and what it means to be moved by language. ” Cecile Coulon
“All my writing work consists in trying to find the state in which we are before the alphabet, we perceive the world through the body, it is with the words that I will seek this territory. ” Jeanne Benameur
The step of Isis, Jeanne Benameur, Editions Bruno Doucey (Extract)
When I walk
Isis
in my head gather the fragments of the world
since childhood
that’s what I learned to let come inside me
something taking shape
by the words
everything was food for me
my readings enlivened by the smell of the tides
my whole body chewing over the words read
letting them run through me
better than at my table
in my schoolroom
thought is the whole body called required
it takes time and silence
I learned as a child
then teenager
to bring my scattered world together
ici
on the beaches
winter and summer…
The final word
Cécile Coulon: Where is the writing going, does it have a destination?
Jeanne Benameur: “When we give the text for publication, there is the hope that it will go to the hearts of others, that it can provoke this spark between body, thought and desire, which makes us singular beings. “
THE SOURCES of the guest
**Choix musical :**Bird on the wire by Dom la Nena and Rosemary Stanley
Textes sources : Praise of risk by Anne Dufourmentelle, the novels of Hella Hasse and those of Virginia Woolf
LECTURES
The patience of traces, Jeanne Benameur, Actes Sud, 2022
The step of Isis, Jeanne Benameur, Bruno Doucey (poetry collection 2022)
The stays Jeanne Benameur
those who leave, Jeanne Benameur, Actes Sud
The child who Jeanne Benameur, South Acts
In the forest of long-waiting, Hella Hasse
Praise of riskAnne Dufourmantelle, Editions Rivages
Musical programming
ALBIN DE LA SIMONE The next hundred years
CIGARETTES AFTER SEX Pistol
ROSEMARY STANDLEY & THE HOUSE OF LA NENA Bird on the wire
Go further
Jeanne Benameur’s website at Actes Sud
Ordinary rebels, facebook page
