On his website, Daniel Leduc welcomes the visitor suggesting that "if you're here, it's because you are, like me, a lover of words". The words which come back the most often throughout his work are those often naming our natural environment, usual too, for example, to many haiku sequences. In Leduc's case though, in addition to these words which create echoes by their repetition is another word, even more frequently found: the word "word" itself ["mot"]. This word constantly re-appears as though no poem can get far away from the birth of the "parole" (the possibility of the word), as if each poem tells of its own creation and the space where it is born. This creates a striking effect: in 'Le livre qui se délivre', Daniel Leduc writes "words, meanings, and sounds enter the reader's universe, like a wave which, by its ebbs and flows, leaves their silt and suspends time" ["les mots, les sens et les sons pénètrent l'univers du lecteur, comme une vague qui, par son va-et-vient, déposerait le limon et suspendrait le temps".] In 'Une approche de l'oeuvre de Daniel Leduc', Patrick Raveau states that: "Daniel Leduc's poems tell untiringly of the oscillation, the rippling, the resonances, the links that exist between all things. An ephemereal link always to be reinvented, which defines the poetic act as a place for sharing" ["Les poèmes de Daniel disent inlassablement l'oscillation, le frémissement, la résonance, le lien entre toutes choses. Lien éphémère et toujours à réinventer, qui définit l'acte poétique comme lieu de partage".] Daniel Leduc writes in various genres (short stories, poems in verse and prose) and commands a variety of tones, but he never strays from his illustration of the word.

In a set of poems called ‘Antonin Artaud ou la déchirure des sens’, Leduc draws a haunting picture of Artaud's own search for mastery of the word which was, obviously, a very tortured search. In Van Gogh ou le suicidé de la société (1947), Artaud describes his belief that his words and his so-called 'madness' (by others) are being censored by people who simply can't accept his (the) truth. In his cycle of poems on Artaud, Leduc tries at one point to capture just this:

Waters burn under the eyelids,
dreams spun into life by reality.
On the boards
the puppet harangues us,
bends its body, arches its mind
in front of the strangers.
Absurd, absurd,
absurd --
or true
truth.

Les eaux brûlent sous les paupières,
des rêves que la réalité anime.
Sur les tréteaux
la marionnette harangue,
plie le corps, ploie l'esprit
devant les étrangers.
Absurde, absurde,
absurde --
ou vérité
vraie.

Annetna Nepo will be printing two previously unpublished poems by Leduc in our second issue. In the meantime, you can see more or his poems on our website (under “selected poems”), and can also visit his website

One final quote from Leduc:

"Le premier nuage créa la première aube, après la nuit des siècles. Il se forma entre silence et cri, sur l'horizon qui se mouvait enfin. Il ressemblait au vent qui départage les convulsions terrestres" (Leduc, Le livre des tempêtes)

Select bibiography: La respiration du monde. Editions Arcam. 1988 (Prix du Syndicat des Journalistes et Ecrivains.), L'homme séculaire, Editions L’Harmattan. 1993. (Couverture de Noric. Prix René Lyr, décerné par l'Association des Ecrivains Belges.), Le Livre des Nomades, Verlag Im Wald (Allemagne) 1997 Bilingual edition (French-German). Translation by R. Fischer. Original drawings by Bertrand Sylvestre. Preface by Jean-Claude Villain, Partage de la Lumière, Editions de l’Etoile du Nord (Canada) 2002 and La respiration des jours Editions L'Harmattan 2002.