Concise and incisive, Larry Tremblay’s poems create a tessera of Bacon’s troubled universe, revealing the artist’s relationship to light and time. Tremblay has cultivated a special fascination for Francis Bacon’s paintings: its theatre of bodies, the physicality of the soul and its metamorphosis into flesh. To be able to write such a book on the works of a painter, the poet explores each of his paintings. The paintings surrender new meanings in fragments and succinct discoveries. The reader is witnessing a dialogue between Bacon (whose pain is continuously recapitulated) and Tremblay’s poetry (whose body is emptied as the poet immerses deeper into the folds of the painting). Throughout the years a special painting, in fractured nuance and hesitant context, developed in the spirit of the poet attracted by the questions Bacon’s work that keeps on kindling.

Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and Kathakali specialist. He has published more than 30 books as a playwright, novelist, poet and essayist. His acclaimed theatrical works have been produced around the world. In 2006, he was awarded the Canada Council Victor-Martyn-Lynch-Staunton Prize for his contribution to theatre. The prestigious press Gallimard Paris published Piercing, a collection of three of his short stories. In 2008, Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre premiered at Espace Go in Montreal, directed by Claude Poissant (Théâtre Pàp), and was nominated for the Best Production 2007-2008 (Montreal) by the Quebec Critics` Association. Larry Tremblay was a finalist in 2008 and in 2011 for the Siminovitch Prize. In 2010, in Calgary, the Alberta Theatre Project produced Abraham Lincoln Goes the Theatre, translated by Chantal Bilodeau, under the direction of Bob White. The same year, his play The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi was directed by Claude Poissant at the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), in Montreal. In 2012, the SACD (Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques), in partnership with France Culture, awarded his play, War Cantata, the Prix SADC for best world play written in French. It also won the CEAD (Centre des auteurs dramatiques) award, Le Prix Michel-Tremblay, for the best play written in Quebec in 2012. His play Child Object was also staged in 2012 in Quebec City by Christian Lapointe. His plays, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, The Ventriloquist, and Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre are considered classics. Apart from his plays, Larry Tremblay recently published three highly acclaimed novels, including The Obese Christ (2012), and The Orange Grove, which in 2014 won the Quebec’s Bookseller Prize, the « Prix littéraire des collégiens» and 13 other prizes in Canada and Europe. It is now published in 20 countries. L’impureté (The Impurity), his last novel, came out in 2016. Until 2009 Larry Tremblay was teaching acting and dramatic writing at l’École supérieure de théâtre de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. His official website is larrytremblay.ca.

Professor Norman Cornett has published in numerous Canadian and American magazines as well as being a guest professor in many North American and European universities. Professor Cornett’s translations have been featured in reference literary journals such as Canadian Literature, Windsor Review, Rampike, Literary Review of Canada, FreeFall and ARC. He is the main translator of Naim Kattan’s novel Farida.