The Hardness of Matter and Water fulfills a poetic odyssey Québécois poet Pierre Nepveu began over four decades ago. Through a sequence of four prose poems, his anonymous protagonist walks from the heart of present-day Montreal into its southwestern margins, where the metropolis began centuries ago and which now “lays out its memories on the young grass.” Questioning his sense of belonging, social unease and mortality as he walks, and following “a shadowy voice that neither sings nor speaks,” Nepveu transports readers across wide spans of history, geography, metaphysics and speculation.

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