If you’re really curious about language, read a bilingual collection of poetry. Thomas Scott’s poems are simple and eloquent in both English and French, but in the latter, romantic language, his words shift from streams to waterfalls. In “Wm. Shakespeare at McDonalds”: “We slip behind the golden arches/ to take our noonday meal” becomes “Nous nous glissons derrière l’arche d’or/ pour prendre notre repas de midi” in “Molière au MacDo.”
by Thomas Scott (French translation by Daniel Soha), $22, 203 pgs, gref.recf.ca