b a n n e d p o e t r y
heresies, lamentations and other infidelities
editor Paulette Claire Turcotte
Banned Poetry was created to present and publish alternative and innovative poetry, works that inspire, that celebrate outsider poetry and prose, experimental, avant-garde, unique works that inspire and stir.
Artist’s Statement
My poetry is born out of my love affair with words and my passion for charged play and exploration of the hidden, the mystery at work beneath our consciousness. My poetry has grown out of a sense of social outrage, an immense love of this creature world, wild nature, and out of my own journey through madness and grace. It has grown out of a precious relationship with love and death and hope. If my work has a calling it is to give form and character to the unseen and unheard, the shadows, the untouchables, the unredeemed, and of stretching the boundaries between madness and sanity, between the banal and the mystical in an attempt to restore our quaking humanity.
I am presently interested in producing works to acknowledge the potential of language to access deeper states of mind, to re-frame experience, to explore the boundaries between genres and poetic form while holding to the creative poetic species as a measure and gauge.
Paulette Claire Turcotte
ART DIRECTOR - CDRIS . OUTSIDER POET & ARTIST
GRAPHIC DESIGNER . AUTHOR . EDITOR
Paulette Turcotte is an author, visionary and outsider poet and artist. Her work has been published in numerous presses in print and online. She is editor of Banned Poetry/VOX, cdris/PRIMITIVA Press, co-founder of Split Quotation Press, a founding member of the Pacific Festival of the Book, Curator of a ZINE- Alternative & Modern Arts and Review and an AVANT-GARDE poetry ZINE. She has been recipient of the ANTHOS Poetry prize and a Canada Council grant for writing (short stories). As well as two non-fiction books, she has three books of poetry with her art and two books of poetry--What the Dead Want, Ekstasis Editions, and The Silence in the Centre of Bone published in 2019.
the Ovum of God
EXTINCTION with rumours of mercy II
1.
the bell rings three times sounding in perpetuity. mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
2.
the old women and the old men walking through the square in daylight strike their breasts continually. for today, for tomorrow, for always.
3.
the dead admonish humankind. words, alone and singular. words. bloody words.
4.
the hagia sophia from the inside. divine wisdom chafing against the bone. woman moves towards light. rises. the dome. the word. the vault.
5.
language transitions in dark times. words affixed to origins arouse the god from his slumber.
6.
I danced naked in the rain, circling the cabin several times rousing a triple rainbow. the mud, black and rich, squeezed up through my toes.
7.
by accident, I called in the primordial rites. the soles of my feet still remembered the coals from the last firewalk.
8.
the stars celebrate the sky, the eyes of god leaking fire and dust. and flowers gorging on their secret destinies flaunt their infinity hue.
9.
the holy ghost opened my magnificent madness. like hungry ghosts, the voices screamed on the other side of the wall.
10.
the origins of myth, streaming me in, blood and bone. the constructs of the mind won’t hold. follow your instincts, the mind is a forsaken universe. I carry a sack of magic stones.
11.
muster some courage lads, January is cold. cold. when the wind howls that way there is an omen to it. grey skies, indifferent. another earth, voices. the voices in the wind looking for a home.
12.
I gave up my savage secrets to the wind. my desolation aroused the god slipping through the cracks in the world. we were sinking deeper. sinking deeper. I am an occupied country. love in the dark. no. I never said his name.
13.
I traced a prayer on his skin with my tongue, the smooth skin on his inner arm. love. the wonder and the terror nailed to the cross. touch me deeply. touch me now. I gave you 24 red roses he said.
14.
the stars went quiet that night. we were the voices in the wind. covered in ancient scars.
15.
fallen idols lament their origins, pleading the blood of Jesus as they fall. the moon falls into the horizon. I am a broken thing. fly me out of here.
the moon is still shining in the sepulchres.
©Paulette C Turcotte 02 02 2020
time is a winged god
1.
breath in breath out in out out out out
2.
my heart is a drunken wizard passing time in a penal colony.
3.
offspring and the long way out of putrification.
4.
salvation, painting the planet of my sublimation.
5.
give it a silver star, for the broken hills, give it a star.
6.
I am a stowaway in the city of my iniquities.
7.
marking time by how many breaths it takes to sustain a life.
8.
I’ve given up counting breaths.
9.
famine commands mercy, determines outcomes.
10.
waves pound their names into rock.
11.
exiles waiting for their shining star.
12.
I love you with such tenderness.
13.
we could never have said our goodbyes without flinching.
14
the outbreaths are way too long.
©Paulette C Turcotte 2020
Canadian poet and editor, Patrick White said of her poetry, “Superlative, poignant, profound, where has she been hiding? Her work is supremely moving on all levels. Stunningly beautiful and powerful, her writing is urgent with ecstasy.”
“Her work is beautifully lucid and pure. It’s hard to remember when I’ve read anything as emotionally supple, darkly radiant and spiritually poignant as this in years. If the word masterpiece means anything anymore, this is definitely a prime- time candidate.” Patrick White (of Bride of Sorrows, cdris/ARTS Press, 2013)
Paulette Turcotte (Claire) has been involved with the arts community for more than 40 years as a painter and poet/writer. In 1985, Paulette and Jorge Etcheverry founded Split Quotation, a publishing press in Ottawa,Ontario. Paulette Turcotte has a strong background in Jungian studies and the arts and has been a dream practitioner and teacher for 25 years. She founded and directed the Corinne Centre in Peterborough, Ontario and created and taught courses in Creativity, Women's Spirituality with a Jungian framework and founded CDRIS in 2006.
Her poetry and art have been published in various presses in print and online, such as: Ygdrasil, Angel House Press, Ditch, World Poetry Month.ca, Side walk Oracle, Churn Magazine, ZIGEST MAG, A-Minor, VISPO, When Women Waken, The New Post-Literate, the Tower Journal, La Cita Trunca, Banned Poetry, Quarry Press, Anthos, Vox Feminarum, Room of One’s Own/Room, Synchronicity, Atlantis, Waves, a Tree Anthology edited by Heather Ferguson, Ottawa, Decanto Anthology, Poemata Anthology, Vispo. When Women Waken. Diaphanous Press. Her work has been featured in Ygdrasil, 2012, and Churn Magazine, 2015.
Paulette is Editor of Banned Poetry, cdris/Primitiva Press, cdrisARTS, co-founder at Split Quotation Press, one of the founding organizers of Pacific Festival of the Book; Curator of a ZINE- Alternative & Modern Arts and Review and a facebook page of the same name, and AVANT-GARDE Poetry ZINE, and publisher at cdrisARTS Press. She has been a recipient of the ANTHOS Poetry prize, and Canada Council grant for writing (short stories). As well as three non-fiction book, she has 4 books of poetry with her art. The Book of Marecha is a chapbook. Three other poetry books are long poems which include her art. Visions on the Edge of Time, Bride of Sorrows, the Mysterium of Godde, and two books of poetry--What the Dead Want, Ekstasis Editions, and The Silence in the Centre of Bone published in 2019, a chapbook from Trainwreck Press in 2020, SAID OR said, and forthcoming, a memoir as well as a new poetry collection, Incantations and Holy Spells (poems for apocalyptic times),
In an interesting correspondence with her cousin Don Shaughnessy, in 2014, Paulette discovered she was related to Jack Kerouac through her father's lineage to both of Jack's parents, Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque and Leo Alcide Kerouac.
Paulette Claire lives on the unceded Coast Salish territories located in the traditional territories of the Lkwungen speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees nations.
link to PAULETTE TURCOTTE Studio76
"She works instinctively, honouring the flow of material- feeling, images and words to flow freely from the unconscious..."
Turcotte's art works include paintings, sketches, sculpture, multi-media prints and mixed-media art.
Her work is influenced by her connections to the natural world, her love of wild nature, ancestral connections in dreams, and many years in Jungian studies and analysis. She works instinctually, honouring the flow of material from the unconscious, using mixed media, paint, charcoal, ink and constant experimentation with images, building layers and text, honouring the images that emerge.
She is presently exploring the dynamic in word and image in various forms from digital works and prints, to working with mixed media in fabric and collage. Her latest hybrid artworks and prints are the results of years of combining techniques and experiments as well as her many years experience in painting and drawing.