I put him out of my head and turned instead to my last suspect: Maïssa (and I enjoyed putting the two dots above the i) Lamar. It wasn’t a name I’d come across before. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal more I could add. She had refused to speak to Hawthorne and in the brief moment I’d met her, she had denied having a friend here on the island, even though I had seen him at the airport and later in the street. The man in the leather jacket had no name so I represented him with a question mark in a circle. It was impossible to guess their relationship. Friends? Lovers? Accomplices? He hadn’t been at the party, but she had. And she had also been up to the first floor – even if this had been before le Mesurier was killed.

Finally, I wasn’t convinced by her performance poetry. No poet was as bad as that. I thought back to the haiku she had recited, the one about her ex-boyfriend. On an impulse, I reached for my phone and opened Google Chrome. First I went to Wikipedia.

WIKIPEDIA

The Free Encyclopedia

Maïssa Lamar

Maïssa Lamar is a French spoken-word artist, author and poet.

Contents

1 Early life

2 Career

2.1 2012 to present

3 Selected works

4 Awards and honours

Early life

Born in Rouen on August 6 1981, Maïssa Lamar has become one of the most powerful new voices in today’s poetry scene, with a particular love of Norman culture. Her writing began with a visit to the Seine-Maritime department, where she holidayed as a child.[1][2] She lives in Paris, France.

Career

2012 to present

Lamar has won numerous awards for her poetry, which draws on many inspirations, from the Petrarchan sonnet to the Japanese haiku. Her poems have been published in several countries and she has been a member of the Académie Mallarmé since 2013.

She performs much of her work in Cauchois, a largely forgotten dialect which she learned from her grandfather. Le Monde described her as ‘a leading light in the revival of Cauchois culture’ and in 2011 she was given the Freedom of the City of Lille. Her poems have been published in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Selected works

• L’Autostop et autres poèmes (Hitchhiking and Other Poems), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2009, ISBN 978-2-84116-147-8
• L’École en lames de rasoir (The School Made of Razor Blades), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2006, ISBN 978-2-84116-116-4, republished in 2008[14]
• Le Livre de feuilles et d’ombres (The Book of Leaves and Shadows), Cheyne éditeur, France, 2004, ISBN 978-2-84116-096-9

Awards and honours

• Prix Louis-Guilloux – 2014
• Prix Mallarmé – 2012
• Grand Prix de poésie de la SGDL – 2009