Liliane Welch (1937- ) is a Canadian poet. Borealis has published six books of her poetry: "This Numinous Bond" (2003), "Unlearning Ice" (2001), "The Rock's Stillness" (1999), "Frescoes" (1998), "Fidelities" (1997), and Assailing Beats" (1979). She co-authored two volumes of criticism on modern French poetry, and published a book of essays, "Seismographs" (1988). Her writings are included in anthologies and translated into other languages. She taught at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

This Numinous Bond, one of Liliane Welch´s finest collections, plumbs our deepest relations with the visible and invisible world, and speaks "for things that last." ("Lava") Addressing people and places in unforgettable ways, Welch makes us equally at home in sun-drenched Umbria and busy Venice and Florence, as in the peaceful landscapes of New Brunswick and Luxembourg. She delights in the seraphic pleasures of angels and in the modulated joy of humans. She shares with Whitman, Dickinson, Thoreau, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Dante, writers she celebrates in this volume, a genius for sharp observation and an aspiration to move beyond the conventional.
These poems move and strengthen us with their inexhaustible energy and their surprising aural imagination.
In Liliane Welch´ hands, words become paintings and paintings become music in a divinely inspired and unique way . . . Each poem is a spiritual trip for the writer as well as for the reader. Mylène Rizzi
Liliane Welch has a remarkable ability to reveal links and associations that give a poet´s vision of a truly international world of arts and letters. Marie-Anne Hansen-Pauly
In a voice both candid and lyrical, Welch reveals an intimate bond with life and art, divulging such vivacity that one cannot escape unaffected . . . She inspirits her readers, sharing passionately her own freedom of vision. Margaret Priemer

Full of music and intimate meditations, varied and inventive in form, Unlearning Ice celebrates the rhythms imposed by the seasons.
Situated in Europe, the spring and early summer poems reinvent a "geology of desire" from encounters with art works, mountains and friends. Singing out of New Brunswick, autumn and winter poems unlock the sensuous melody of "a land that hungers for language." In this Canadian setting, Welch turns a fresh eye on Luxembourg, and engages in sustained poetic conversations with Luxembourgish painter Gust Graas and New Brunswick photographer Thaddeus Holownia.
Unlearning Ice reaches accross the Old and New Worlds, as Welch turns her compassionate ear to the rich silences, the lost and living musics of the landscapes and the cultures that she loves.
Other Borealis titles by Liliane Welch:
Assailing Beats(1979) Fidelities(1997) Frescoes(1998) The Rocks Stillness(1999)

Here is a writer who has opened her eyes, embraced the world and attempted to understand it, a writer with a wonderful command of images and artistic control. Here poems fuse the visual with ideas to create an expression engaging, challenging and incredibly refreshing ... Vasari and Petrarch would be proud of the Renaissance spirit.

Fidelities

Fidelities resonates with the invocation to "make everything possible" in our own lives. Whether recalling moments of childhood, conjuring stories of human bonds, or prolonging the light of Colville, Giacometti or Vermeer, these passionate poems invite us to travel "from underground passageways into the sun."

Welch is "a traveller, venturing into the unexplored frontiers of her imagination from her ... vivid memories of the past and her rock-solidness of the present."
Shaun Hunter, Journal of Canadian Poetry, 4, 1989

Frescoes

... captures the force of travels - be they climbing expeditions in the Alps or encounters with artists in museums, cathedrals, cemeteries, books. At once vibrant and meditative, these collected pieces explore how travel releases from emptiness and closure so that life may burn once more intensely at home..

Fidelities

Fidelities resonates with the invocation to "make everything possible" in our own lives. Whether recalling moments of childhood, conjuring stories of human bonds, or prolonging the light of Colville, Giacometti or Vermeer, these passionate poems invite us to travel "from underground passageways into the sun."

Welch is "a traveller, venturing into the unexplored frontiers of her imagination from her ... vivid memories of the past and her rock-solidness of the present."
Shaun Hunter, Journal of Canadian Poetry, 4, 1989