Dominique Hecq grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. She now lives in Melbourne. With a BA in Germanic Philology, an MA in literary translation, and a PhD in English, Hecq writes across genres and disciplines—and sometimes across tongues. Her creative works include a novel, three collections of stories, and ten volumes of poetry— Kaosmos (Melbourne Poets Union) and Tracks: Autofictional Fragments of a Journey without Maps (Recent Work Press), both published in 2020 are her latest.
Among other honours such as the Melbourne Fringe Festival Award for Outstanding Writing and Spoken Word Performance, the Woorilla Prize for Fiction, the Martha Richardson Medal for Poetry, the New England Poetry Prize, and the inaugural AALITRA Prize for Literary Translation (Spanish to English), Dominique Hecq is a recipient of the 2018 International Best Poets Prize administered by the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre in conjunction with the International Academy of Arts and Letters.
Fencing with Béatrice Machet in 2018, Dominique contributed a bilingual Flying Islands Press pocket book titled Crypto.
Plus proche de l’aube
Attrape le jour par la peau du coup
les retours au bercail ont les dents pointues
bien qu’ignorantes du sens elles mordent et
confondent
les premières rondeurs avec un premier amour
sombres et douces les paroles
se fondent dans le tourbillon de l’encre
que nous appelons survie
goutte à goutte c’est toi-même reflété et recueilli
aussi noir que le souffle quand il se faufile
entre les crocs
sous le soleil qui louche
si chaud tu te glisses à l’intérieur
en fuite et griffonne
au sujet de rencontres
interstellaires
un oiseau-arc-en-ciel—qui
ne t’appartient pas—
est ta main qui salue
que pourrait-elle attraper qui ne s’échapperait
en gribouillant
mais un « je »
avec multiples voix
et personnages sauvant
scénarios et fragments de temps
ou de mort
quelles quantités pour la même chose
mais un I
ceberg en guise de bateau
revendiquant son extériorité
qui fermente jusqu’à ce que gonflé jusqu’à
ce qu’éclaté prématurément
en essayant pourtant d’être plus humain
alors que des dents de glace s’écrasent sur le rivage
Nearer this dawn
Pick up the day by the scruff of the neck
homecomings have sharp teeth
though ignorant of meaning they bite
taking puppy fat for puppy love
and dark soft words
melt in ink swirl we call
survival
drop by drop it is
your very self reflected and gathered
as dark as breath when it sneaks out
between fangs
under the cross-eyed sun
so hot you creep inside
and scribble at large
about interstellar
encounters
a rainbow bird—which
doesn’t belong to you—
is your hand wavering
what could it grasp that wouldn’t escape
through scrawling
but an I
with multiple voices
and personae salvaging
scenarios and pieces of time
or death
which amounts to the same thing
but an I
ceberg standing for the ship
claiming its outsiderhood
fermenting till swollen till
prematurely split open
yet trying to be more human
as iceteeth crash on the shoreline