A R O U N D T H E P L A C E
1 9 6 3
My Inner Colour
I am red
Colour blind people confuse me with greenery
Walking rootless plant
Privet cut as a damsel
Alfalfa wall cut as a woman
Erect against everything and the whole
I oppose myself as green but on a red background
Very red I say it again incredibly red
Around the Place (Autour du lieu)
Librairie galerie Racine, 2008
isbn : 2-243-04375-0
Madeleine Novarina began writing poems at a young age, only one of which remains, La clé de mes chimères (the key of chimerae) written in Lyon during the occupation, when she was nineteen. From 1965 onwards, she felt the need to return to it. Between the age of 43 and 46, she wrote a book titled Autour du lieu (Around the place).
“At the time she wrote these poems, Madeleine Novarina made hundreds of ink drawings inspired by her perpetually sparkling libido at the rate of two or three a day. It was very fun to see her, in a jiffy, giving birth to countless pieces of paper with pictures of the various women who were in her, the lover, the dreamer, the playful one, the accomplice of children, the fighter, the worrier, the careless one, the mocking or the unconventional one.”
Sarane Alexandrian
Autour du lieu
Éditions Librairie Galerie Racine, Paris, 2008.
Sexuel desire creates a void around lovers
When the wolf scrutinises with a magnifying glass
His transparent female
Then fur of the white desert ripples
Beneath the sandy wave
La rêverie féminine
ou la veilleuse de nuit, 1967
Christophe Dauphin’s collection
Ms. Portosex suffers the effects of safe port
The drudgery of household once again
I snacksoup
You polishidy
She washupise
We overscrub
You metalspongestuff
They blindzenzim
The Enchanted Bed
Under the purple quilt the sleepers breathe
holding hands
The red eye of Mercedes did not blink
Twenty-four twenty-five degrees of luxury
The cube in the attic floats in the space of the dream
Very far away
They went seeking themselves
To redefine their gender
La voyante, 1968
The Loving Woman arriving with a Dance Step
(Amoureuse arrivant sur un pas de danse), 1965
Le Couple, 1966
La Cénaphore, 1967
La Protectrice, 1968
Une Femme bouleversée, 1968
Pour Sarane, 1969
La Nourrice des poissons, 1968
Tête de ligne, 1968
La Cueillante, 1967
