Darrell Bourque

 

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Biography

Darrell Bourque is the author of In Ordinary Light, New and Selected Poems (2010) and Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie (2013). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate in 2007-08 and from 2009-11. He is on the boards of the Ernest J. Gaines Center and Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective and is a founding member of Narrative4 of Chicago. He lives in rural St. Landry Parish with his wife Karen, a glass artist.


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Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie

Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie is a reflection of contemporary life in Acadiana in Louisiana and it is a story of the legend(s) of the journey of the Acadians from the Canadian Maritimes and the various ways they made their way to Louisiana. The book is divided into three sections: the first in mixed forms mostly about contemporary Acadie in Louisiana, a bridge section, and then a twenty-seven sonnet sequence featuring principal characters and historical figures of the eighteenth-century deportation experience.

"Too often, the poetry in my life is a luxury, like fine dessert. It adds depth and texture to my day, certainly, but it is not sustenance. Darrell Bourque's work, though, is something else entirely. His poetry is beyond necessary. His is an art bearing the weight of real life, lived through pain, beauty, love, and loss, just on the edge of full knowing. Bourque's lines are an expression of human experience as it brushes against the ghost of knowledge.

The poems in Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie offer personal revelations in the wake of the illness and death of loved ones. They open the minds and spirits of great artists from Van Gogh to Elemore Morgan Jr. And most importantly, these poems give real voice to historical figures like Beausoleil, Elizabeth Brasseaux, and Olivier Terrio who must speak so that we remember them for what they birthed here in Acadiana.

The simple truth is, I need Darrell Bourque's poetry to live. I need it for the history it documents so eloquently. I need it for the present it renders so delicately. Most of all, I need it for the future it offers in its understanding of what's truly valuable in the lives we share with each other." - Jack B. Bedell, author of Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems

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