How to bring oneself to coincide with a foreign city? How to experience everyday life found on the streets of Rome or any other city? Whether it be in poetic prose or in verse, the texts of Words for the Traveler become chanting and lament for beings in search of answers when faced with unexpected doubt. One is asked to find in this book a need to survive at all cost, a obstinate desire for joy and incarnation. The noises of the world turn to be a call to resist any sign of collapse. Poetry is a crossing, a path that leads to reality.

“From the very first pages, the readers get the impression that we are dealing with a fine story teller; everyone of his poems tells a story that unfolds against the major narrative of a Roman backdrop. Here is a traveler who is constantly pulled away from the world, lost in nostalgia kindled by the appearance of children… The journey enables him to feel who he truly is, without artifice, away from the daily constraints of a home, confronted more profoundly by the existential emptiness that awaits every one of us…”
~ Caroline Chabot, Lettres québécoises

Poet, fiction and non-fiction writer Hugues Corriveau was poetry reviewer for Montreal’s daily Le Devoir between 2006 and 2017. He also was a literary critic for Lettres québécoises between 1990 and 2011. A five-time finalist for the Governor General Award, he has written over thirty books since 1978. His writings have been recognized for their excellence; he has won the Alfred-Desrochers Award twice and the Grand Prix du livre de Sherbrooke. In 1999 he was offered the Alain-Grandbois Award for Le livre du frère (Book for a Brother). His latest novel, La fêlure de Thomas, was published in 2018. Hugues Corriveau lives in Montreal.