The Wind Under Our Footsteps, a selection from four books by Diane Régimbald, startles with its energetic originality. Régimbald, a vital Quebec poet, appearing in English for the first time in a translation by Antonio D’Alfonso, leads the reader along a path of dark wisdom. The sequence is profoundly elemental and vigorous as it moves through the dreamlike spaces between the sensual and the mindful experiences of existence. The book begins with an epigraph from Paul Celan which sets the tone for the entire volume: “They told me that this is/in water a stone and a circle//and on water a word/ that draws a circle around the stone.” Life and death, light and dark, day and night, all are separated by the dawn. as consciousness is separated from the body. Diane Régimbald writes in the spaces between silence and language as the poet crosses the borders between the mind and self. An intricate and valuable work, The Wind Under Our Footsteps goes to the heart of language in this exquisite translation.

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Antonio D'Alfonso was born in Montreal. He studied at Loyola College from 1970 to 1975, where he got his B.A. in Communication Arts. Later on he went to Université de Montréal to complete his Master's Science Degree in Communication Studies, specializing in Semiology; his thesis was on Mouchette, a film by Robert Bresson. In 1978 he founded Guernica Editions, where he edited over 450 books by authors from around the world. In 1982 along with three other writers, he founds the trilingual magazine, Vice Versa. In 1986, along with three other writers, he founded the Association of Italian-Canadian writers. He has taught at Université of Montréal, Continuing Studies at University of Toronto, University of Californa, in San Diego. He is presently a writer in residence at McGill University (French language and literature department).

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