François Charron

Charron, François

François Charron, poet, essayist and painter (b at Longueuil 22 Feb 1952). François Charron is one of the most important poets of his generation, and his output is among the richest of the years 1970-2000. He published more than 30 titles since his first book, 18 assauts (1972), and won numerous literary prizes including the Canada-Belgium prize in 1982 for the body of his work.

While completing studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal where he earned a Bachelor's degree in 1974 and a Master's in 1979, François Charron taught for some years (1973-1977) at the Cégep Montmorency, then devoted himself entirely to writing and painting. Leader of the "new writing" movement associated with the magazine Les herbes rouges, François Charron entered literature opposing traditional poetry, which he parodied and deconstructed, and immersed himself in poetic experimentation that led him to reject all forms of taboos from social to aesthetic. During this period, the author expressed his Marxist positions, and the following works would appear: Littérature/obscénités (1973), Projet d'écriture pour l'été 76 (1973), Persister et se maintenir dans les vertiges de la terre qui demeurent sans fin (1974), Interventions politiques (1994), Pirouette par hasard poésie (1975), Enthousiasme (1976) and Feu (1978). Poetry is a battle against everything, including itself - an invective, an angry and stubborn irreverence.

Blessures (1978), a collection for which he won the first Émile-Nelligan prize in 1979, marked a definite break in the work of François Charron, who never ceased to confirm thereafter: writing turns its back on orality, the tone becomes very lyrical, a poet's complex interiority mutes his political preoccupations. Sometimes borrowing from intense surrealist writing as in Blessures, wanting to exploit metaphysical questioning as in Mystère (1981), or laying bare free verse by reducing it to a few words as in Toute parole m'éblouira (1982), François Charron's poetry delivers in varied even contradictory but always generous ways, the experience of a subject grappling with the world and with himself (François, 1984; Le monde comme obstacle, 1988; L'intraduisible amour, 1992).

François Charron also wrote about his painting (D'où viennent les tableaux?, 1983). In La passion d'autonomie, an essay that appeared in 1982, he proposes poetry freed from all firms of ideological belonging, in particular nationalist ideology, for a subjectivity that is unceasingly called into question.