Born
in Dorval in the Canadian province of Quebec on March 10, 1865,
Joseph-Hormidas Roy graduated from Ste. Therese College and earned
a degree in medicine from Laval University in Montreal. He moved
to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1893, where he was a physician until
his death in 1931. Dr. Roy and his wife lived at 14 Wannalancit
Street and raised nine children, five daughters and four sons. His
daughter Berangere taught at Butler Junior High School, and his daughter
Carmen was on the faculty of the Franco-American Orphanage in Lowell
(now the Franco-American School at Pawtucket and School streets).
In obituaries in the Lowell newspapers, he was described as a "physician
and poet." In 1902, Dr. Roy's collection of poems Voix Etranges
(Strange Voices) was published by L'Etoile, Lepine & Cie of
613 Merrimack Street. Roy cites the influences of classicist poet
and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636 – 1711) of France
as well as the French Symbolist poets of the mid- to late 19th century,
including Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. Voix Etranges
collects more than 100 poems.
Roy's choice of language, symbols, and imagery calls to mind another
French Canadian-American from Lowell, Jack Kerouac, whose prose
and poetry continue to make an enormous impact on American culture.
Notice in Roy's titles the words "dream" and "night"
and "vain," and especially note the poem titled "Sur
la Sombre Route." Kerouac's timeless novel On the Road is published
as Sur la Route in French editions.
The following poems were translated by poet, writer, and editor
Paul Marion of Lowell and Maryann Mercier Brady, a Lowell native
who chairs the Languages Department at Tyngsborough High School
in Massachusetts. Marion is Director of Community Relations at the
University of Massachusetts Lowell. Both Marion and Mercier Brady
graduated from the University in 1976.
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Copyright © 2001 by
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