Signature Editions

In The Grand Hotel of Foreigners, Claude Beausoleil invites the reader on a voyage which is as much an interior one as a physical one. The narrator explores themes which are important to him, offering an urbane space in which he questions himself about the nature of solitude, wandering, the distance which forms and grows between people, and writing. Beausoleil sustains a strong, rich rhythm which transports the reader and makes him into a traveller into his own mysteries. The Grand Hotel of Foreigners transcended the page and became virtual poetry in a multimedia show created by Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon in collaboration with Claude Beausoleil, which toured the United States, Canada and Venezuela.

Since 1972, Claude Beausoleil has published 58 books, including Intrusion ralenti, Avatars du trait, Le Dormeur, Fureur de Mexico, La vie singulière, Le Rythme des lieux and Rue du jour. He published his first novel, Fort Sauvage, in 1994 and has also edited numerous anthologies, including La poésie canadienne and La poésie mexicaine. Beausoleil teaches at Montreal's Collège Édouard-Montpetit.

From 1978 to 1985 Beausoleil was the poetry critic for Le Devoir in Montreal. He has collaborated on many literary magazines both in Québec and internationally, including Estuaire, Nuit blanche, Jungle and Europe. He is the director of the poetry magazine Lèvres urbaines which began in 1983.

In the course of his career, Beausoleil has won many prizes, including the Nelligan poetry prize, the Grand prix de poésie du Journal de Montréal, the prix Estuaire des Terrases Saint-Sulpice and the Georges-Limbour prize in France. He received the Ordre des Francophones d'Amerique in 1989.

About the translators

Liminaire

We must bear witness with grandeur to our loss
set out for the roads of the world
leaving tracks with no return
there in the burnt blackness of things
in spite of the white blankness within us
to go the distance among broken words
the raucous sounds and nothing mixed with nothing
we must foresee all name all
regain all memory where our souls implode
a renaissance of light dustclouds
between feelings and cities
distinguishing the skyline linked to the metals of urgency
by the exact beauty of the bruises
when the crystalline light shatters the horizon
radiating the hopes of a song
a quiet song so profound
become again imaginable knowing
that we must lose all
to discover the chasms
to dream without illusion but without being silenced
to go the distance
to write to live and to love
in the infinite desire of the face of time