In difficult times, it is good to have companions who help to pass the trials, in the freshness of innocence and reality, on earth and under the sky.
Poems are a resource, they can irrigate life. “ Each season, his poem writes the Belgian poet, Colette Nys-Mazure. Today, in this time of winter, extreme cold and snow, are there words that can invigorate us? Yes, without a doubt, seems to say Colette Nys-Mazure throughout her literary work with evocative titles. I think about The flesh of the poem, a little initiation into poetic life (2004), Poetic life, I believe in it (2015), or even this magnificent essay which made the writer known to the general public, Celebration of the everyday (1997) In the poem Threshold to Threshold, she lets herself be inspired by winter and inspires for this day.
The bitter wind sweeps the plain
The cold strengthened its claws
In the endless darkness
On watch the snow, its fragile light
It is fragile the light of the poem given to our memory and to the heart, when life is harsh, the night long, when the cold encloses. But like Colette Nys Mazure, we can go through life with the words of poets who enchant and help to exist.
Each year, the Literary Academy of Brittany and Pays de la Loire awards the Yves Cosson Prize for Poetry, as if to whisper in our ears in the winter breeze: : “Passing by in a hurry / don’t hurry / by your side walks the poet / it’s your double onlooker” (Yves Cosson). The 2021 poetry prize has just been awarded, precisely to Colette Nys-Mazure. We know her well here. She has been frequenting Anjou for a long time, likes to be inspired in a poetic residence in Rochefort-sur-Loire, leads ” Reading, writing, counting” workshops in Angers, or even meets students during seminars or conferences at the Western Catholic University. The literary jury, saluting the poetic work of Colette Nys-Mazure, emphasizes how much the poet enchants the world by inventing images and music that rekindle the fires in the night, awakening lively attention to the living. She tells us how much we need poets. Three years ago, she asked me to preface her book Prières par tous les temps, which she had published by Éditions Fidliité. I recommend this collection which allows you to face the crossing of days less alone and move forward, in a prayer:
Help me seize the moment,
To maintain fervor and awakening,
To leap while I remain
Like a child who dares not throw himself
In wide open arms.
