An abecedarian in two languages: twenty-six poems, one for each letter, in which Nicole Brossard sets the alphabet loose and follows where its sounds lead.

First published in French in 2007, Le Dos indocile des mots comes from one of Québec's essential poets — a two-time Governor General's Award winner, recipient of the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award and the Prix Athanase-David, and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Across the sequence, words rub shoulders with their alphabetical neighbours and cast one another in unexpected light: cendres carnivores, délire duo dada, a jaguar leaping out of the letter J.

Karen McPherson's translation meets Brossard's constraint with its own. Bound to the letter as well as the sense, she pushes at syntax and sound to keep the alphabet intact in English — and at one point lets two letters trade places entirely, a defection she describes in her introduction as an adventure of Sharing and Questing.

Presented with French and English on facing pages, with an introduction and notes by the translator.