Denise Desautels fonds [multiple media (some electronic)] Archives / Collections and Fonds
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Hierarchy 
Denise Desautels fonds [multiple media (some electronic)]
Hierarchical level:FondsContext of this record:Fonds includes:12 lower level description(s)View lower level description(s) -
Finding aid Supports multiples Finding aid no. MSS2788 The finding aid is a file list listing volumes 1 to 36 and also includes digital documents. (Electronic) (90: Open)
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf002/p000004039.pdf -
Record information Denise Desautels fonds [multiple media (some electronic)]
Date:1938-2019.Reference:R16317-0-8-EType of material:Textual material, Art, Photographs, Moving images, Sound recordings, Stamps and stamp productsFound in:Archives / Collections and FondsItem ID number:6689057Date(s):1938-2019.Bilingual equivalent:Place of creation:Various placesExtent:4.66 m of textual records.
1,045 photographs : 857 col. and 169 b&w prints; 78 col. slides; 4 b&w and 1 col. contact sheet; 2 col. transparencies; 1 col. negative; 1 col. snapshot; 1 b&w pinhole; 1 printed digital photograph.
47 prints.
32 drawings.
26 paintings and drawings.
9 watercolours.
9 printed digital prints.
3 collages.
1 engraving.
1 stamp.
12 videocassettes (7 hrs 55 min. 42 sec.) : VHS.
3 audio cassettes (2 hrs 35 min. 18 sec.).
12 audio discs (10 hrs 3 min. 51 sec.) : CD; DVD.
11 optical discs (5 hrs 30 min. 38 sec.) : DVD.
6.98 GB of textual records (10,351 files).
2.91 GB of photographs (535 files).
1.73 GB of images (133 files).
0.97 GB of audiovisual records (6 files).
0.41 GB of audio records (13 files).Language of material:FrenchAdded language of material:French, English, Spanish, Multiple languagesScope and content:The Denise Desautels fonds reflects the life and work of one of the most important voices in Francophone poetry in Canada. It contains the manuscripts or typescripts, often in several versions, of about fifty collections of poetry, artist books or dramatic texts that Denise Desautels wrote or published between 1980 and 2018, as well as a few unpublished texts. On top of that, there are many documents concerning the texts she published in newspapers, magazines, anthologies or composite works, several of which were later included in her works.
The fonds also contains documents related to the translation of texts by Denise Desautels into English, Spanish, Catalan and Italian, as well as her own translation into French of texts by other authors. It tells of her involvement in several organizations and paraliterary activities, such as juries and mentoring of authors, and her participation in a large number of literary or artistic events in Quebec, in Canada or internationally. Finally, it reflects the immense impact of her work, first through the numerous awards, honours and grants she received during her career, and then through the extensive press files and the many publications about her work that she has carefully compiled and preserved over the years.
Her fonds also includes an impressive collection of professional and personal correspondence with family members, friends and loved ones, as well as writers and artists from Quebec and elsewhere. Finally, it includes a significant number of works by visual artists and photographers with whom Desautels has collaborated or from whom she has drawn inspiration, reflecting the important role these artistic forms play in her writing.
The fonds contains textual records, graphic material, sound and audiovisual recordings, and philatelic records, in analog or digital format. It consists of the following series:
- Series 1. Literary works
- Series 2. Magazines, anthologies, composite works and other writings
- Series 3. Unpublished
- Series 4. Translations
- Series 5. Awards, distinctions, honours and grants
- Series 6. Paraliterary activities
- Series 7. Events
- Series 8. Correspondence
- Series 9. Personal records and memorabilia
- Series 10. Reception of her work
- Series 11. Photographs
- Series 12. Sound and audiovisual recordingsProvenance:Biography/Administrative history:Desautels, Denise, 1945- : Denise Desautels is a Québécoise poet born in Montréal on April 4, 1945. Between 1962 and 1966, she studied at Collège Basile-Moreau, a girls' school run by the Soeurs de Sainte-Croix. She then enrolled at the Université de Montréal, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. She returned there between 1979 and 1980 to pursue a Master of Arts degree. Throughout her career, she worked mainly as a literature teacher at the Sorel-Tracy CEGEP while devoting much of her time to writing.
Denise Desautels describes herself as an "archaeologist of the intimate," who digs and searches to bring forth light from darkness. Her writing explores themes such as memory, childhood, relationship to the mother, death, mourning and absence. Her first book, Comme miroirs en feuilles, with a drawing by Léon Bellefleur, was published in 1975 by Éditions du Noroît, which would become her main poetry publisher in Quebec. She subsequently published more than 20 collections of poetry; an epistolary text (Lettres à Cassandre, in collaboration with Anne Marie Alonzo, Éditions Trois, 1994); a narrative (Ce fauve, le Bonheur, Éditions de l'Hexagone, 1998); a text of poetry for youth (La marathonienne, with reproductions of prints by Maria Chronopoulos, La courte échelle, 2003); and an alphabet book (Ce désir toujours, Éditions Leméac, 2005). Several of her books include photographs or pictorial works by artists such as Jocelyne Alloucherie, Raymonde April, Monique Bertrand, Michel Goulet, Alain Laframboise and Francine Simonin. Between the 1980s and the early 1990s, Desautels also wrote half a dozen radio dramas.
In 2004, Éditions du Noroît published Mémoires parallèles, an anthology of her poetry selected and presented by Paul Chamberland. Her poetry collections L'angle noir de la joie (Éditions Arfuyen and Éditions du Noroît, 2011) and D'où surgit parfois un bras d'horizon (Éditions du Noroît, 2017) were reissued in a single volume by Gallimard in 2022, making Denise Desautels the second Quebec poet, after Gaston Miron, to be included in the "Poetry" collection of the French publishing house. Several of her books have also been translated into English, Spanish and Catalan. In addition to these publications, she published a large number of texts in French or in translation in literary magazines, anthologies and composite works in Canada and about fifteen other countries.
One of Denise Desautels's main contributions is the creation, as an author or collaborator, of about thirty artist books, notably with Bonnie Baxter, Gabriel Belgeonne, Jacques Clerc, Maria Desmée, Betty Goodwin, Jean Luc Herman, Yves Picquet, Frédérique Riba Sarat, Jacqueline Ricard, Françoise Sullivan, Donatella T. and Louise Viger. About half of these artist books were created by her long-time collaborator, Jacques Fournier of Éditions Roselin in Montréal, but others were published in France by Collectif Génération, La Cour Pavée, La Sétérée and Noria Éditions. These books also reflect the importance of visual arts for Denise Desautels. For her, poetry does not evolve on the fringes of other art forms but constantly feeds off them. This interest in the visual arts also led her to contribute to several exhibitions or installations, including Territoires d'artistes/Paysages verticaux (1989), designed and produced by Louise Déry; Dépaysements de sens (2005), with Jacques Fournier and Louise Viger; as well as Voix/Voies (2006), Rêver le nouveau monde (2008) and Alchimie des ailleurs (2011) by Michel Goulet.
Starting in the 1980s, Denise Desautels regularly participated in literary and cultural events in Quebec, elsewhere in Canada and internationally. She was also involved with several literary organizations, where she held various positions. A member of the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ), Desautels was on the board of directors from 1983 to 1985. In 1985, she joined the editorial board of La Nouvelle Barre du jour, a role she would hold for five years. In 1995, she was elected to the Académie des lettres du Québec, where she served as vice president from 1996 to 2001. She was also part of the organizing committee for the Rencontre québécoise internationale des écrivains from 1997 to 2012. Subsequently, between 2013 and 2017, Desautels joined the editorial board of the magazine Les Écrits. During the same period, between 2014 and 2017, she was a member of the Commission du livre et de l'édition spécialisée at the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles. She followed up on this commitment by becoming involved, beginning in 2015, with the Comité Femmes of the Centre québécois du P.E.N. International. Desautels has also been the president or a member of numerous grant and literary prize juries and has played the role of mentor many times for other writers as part of UNEQ's mentorship program. During her career, she completed three writing residencies: at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2001; at the villa Beauséjour of the Maison de la Poésie de Rennes in 2005; and at the Maison des Ailleurs in Charleville-Mézières in 2009.
Desautels's work has been awarded several of the most prestigious literary prizes in Quebec, Canada and the international Francophonie. She won the Grand Prix Québecor at the Festival international de la poésie de Trois-Rivières twice, first for Leçons de Venise (Éditions du Noroît, 1990) and then for Sans toi, je n'aurais pas regardé si haut. Tableaux d'un parc (Éditions du Noroît, 2013). She also received the Governor General of Canada Award, the Terrasses Saint-Sulpice poetry prize from the magazine Estuaire and the Radio-Québec Signet d'or award for Le saut de l'ange (Le Noroît and L'Arbre à paroles, 1992), as well as the Société des écrivains canadiens award and the Radio-Canada poetry prize for Tombeau de Lou (Éditions du Noroît, 2000). In 1999, while the Paris Book Fair was honouring Quebec, Denise Desautels received the "Médaille Échelon Vermeil," the highest distinction awarded by the municipality. The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec awarded her a career grant for her contribution to Quebec culture in 2005, the year La marathonienne (La courte échelle, 2003) received a special mention from the jury of the Québec/Wallonie-Bruxelles award for youth literature. In 2009, Desautels won the Athanase-David award, the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Quebec. The following year, she won the Jean Arp Prize for Francophone literature, presented as part of the sixth Rencontres européennes de littérature in Strasbourg. In 2016, along with visual artist Louise Viger, she was awarded the Prix international Saint-Denys-Garneau for their artist book Du blanc à éteindre (Éditions Roselin, 2012). She also received the Prix Apollinaire in 2022 for Disparaître (Éditions du Noroît and L'Herbe qui tremble, 2021). Denise Desautels is a member of the Order of Canada, a knight of the Ordre national du Québec and a member of the Parlement des écrivaines francophones.Additional information:General note:This accession also included several copies of books, which have been added to the general collection at Library and Archives Canada.
This accession also included artist books, limited editions or distinctive copies of her works that now make up the Denise Desautels collection in the general collection of Library and Archives Canada.
This first accession was acquired directly from Denise Desautels in 2020.Source of title:Title based on the content of the fonds. Unless otherwise indicated, the titles of the files are from the original folders, or an inventory provided by Denise Desautels.Note on the state of conservation:The faxes printed on thermal paper were photocopied on low acid paper. The documents kept in frames were removed from the frames.Language note:Most of the documents are in French. Some documents are in English, Catalan, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Arabic and Danish.Associated material note:At the Université de Sherbrooke, see the Hugues Corriveau fonds, the Louise Cotnoir fonds and the Louise Dupré fonds.Related material:At Library and Archives Canada, see the Anne Marie Alonzo fonds, the Nicole Brossard fonds, the Hélène Dorion fonds and the Paul Chanel Malenfant fonds.Source:Private -
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