Paul Chamberland

Chamberland, Paul

Paul Chamberland, poet (b at Longueuil, Qué 16 May 1939). Chamberland was the most iconoclastic Québec poet of the 1960s and one of the most innovative essayists of the 1970s. His first collections of poetry, Genèses (1962), Le Pays (a 1963 collaboration), Terre Québec (1964), L'Afficheur hurle (1965) and L'Inavouable (1968) cried out "the savage need for liberation." He rejected "unidimensional" politics after 1968, and as prophet and mystic he announced the arrival of "the Kingdom" and named the "Agents of the Future" - the Hommenfandieux and Essaimour. Some of his books were written as manifestos, such as Éclats de la pierre noire d'où rejaillit ma vie (1972), Demain les dieux naîtront (1974). He was the writer-animator of the Fabrike d'ékriture and a contributor to the magazines Mainmise and Hobo-Québec.

Chamberland's books of the 1980s continued to explore the "resolutely lucid delirium" of his earlier works: Terre souveraine (1980), Le Courage de la poésie (1981), L'Enfant doré (1981) and Émergence de l'adultenfant (1981). Un Parti pris anthropologique (1983) is a collection of Chamberland's work published in the magazine Parti pris. In 1983 he published Aléatoire instantané & Midsummer 82 and the essay Le Recommencement du monde.