Gatien Lapointe

Lapointe, Gatien

Gatien Lapointe, poet, professor, publisher (b at Sainte-Justine-de-Dorchester, Qué 18 Dec 1931; d at Trois-Rivières, Qué 15 Sept 1983). He studied at the Petit Séminaire de Québec, the École des arts graphiques in Montréal, Université de Montréal (MA), the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. He published Jour malaisé in 1953 and Otages de la joie 2 years later. In 1962 he won the award of the Club des poètes for Le Temps premier. He received the Prix du Maurier, the Prix du Québec and the Governor General's Award for Ode au Saint-Laurent, which appeared in 1963. He again won the Prix du Québec in 1967 for Le Premier Mot.

He taught at the military college in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and became a professor at U du Québec à Trois-Rivières in 1969. While teaching, he also started and ran Écrits des Forges, a publishing house almost exclusively devoted to poetry. In 1980, after 13 years of silence, he again began publishing his work, bringing out, in order, Arbre-radar, Barbare inouï, Corps et Graphies, Corps de l'instant and Le Premier Paysage. In these later collections, he moved away from lyricism and themes of the land to an entirely modern focus on the body and the moment. But his writings always had the same intensity and sensitivity which provided the unity and value of his work, one of the richest of all Québec poetry.