Rina Lasnier

Lasnier, Rina

Rina Lasnier, poet (born 6 August 1910 in St-Grégoire d'Iberville, Québec; died 9 May 1997 in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec). She studied at the Collège Marguerite Bourgeoys, Montréal, and at the Université de Montréal. Her first publication was Féerie indienne (1939), a religious play followed by several others: Le Jeu de la voyagère (1941), Les Fiançailles d'Anne de Noüe (1943), Notre-Dame du Pain (1947). Her predominant interest lies in poetry and in the renewal of its forms and themes. After Images et proses (1941) and Madones canadiennes (1944), in which prose poems accompany pictorial equivalents, Lasnier published Le Chant de la montée (1947), a biblical meditation upon the human antecedents of the Incarnation.

Escales (1950) demonstrates the richness and complexity of her mature poetic style. After travelling in Europe (1953-54), she published in 1956 Présence de l'absence, which symbolically expresses inner conflict and sorrow. Miroirs (1960) consists of autobiographical prose texts while Mémoire sans jours (1960) envisions poetic creation as an arduous submarine quest. Much recognition has come her way, including the Prix Duvernay (1957), the MOLSON PRIZE (1971), the Prix France-Canada (1973) and the Prix David (1943 and 1974). Her symbolic vision continues to unfold through her work of the 1960s and 1970s: Les Gisants (1963), a meditation on death and eternity; L'arbre blanc (1966), dramatizing the poetic vocation in today's Québec; La Salle des rêves (1971) with its measured response to the intuitions of psychology.

Her poetry was collected in Poèmes I et II (1972), but she has published many works since that time: L'Invisible (1969), Le Rêve du quart jour, (1973), Amour (1975), as well as the prose poems L'Échelle des anges (1975), Les Signes (1976), Matin d'oiseaux (1978), Paliers de paroles (1978), Entendre l'ombre (1981) and Voir la nuit (1981), in which she continues to probe for the unity that may lie beyond sensory experience.