Roland Giguère

Roland Giguère

Roland Giguère, poet, painter, publisher (b at Montréal 4 May 1929; d at Montréal 17 Aug 2003). Recipient of the Paul-Émile Borduas Award in Visual Arts (1982) and a nominee for the coveted Prix David in literature that year, Giguère played, with the foundation of the Éditions Erta (1949), a major role in the development of Québec's artistic life.

It was not until publication of his first collected volume of poems, L'Age de la parole (1965), that he gained recognition, being awarded the Prix France-Québec and the Grand Prix littéraire de la ville de Montréal. For political reasons Giguère refused the Governor General's Award in 1974 for La Main au feu (1973). His last collection was Illuminures (1978). Influenced by the surrealists, Giguère always refused to equate poetry and the written word. To him, poetry was a way of life, a perpetual revolt in which the exterior world was invaded by the artist's interior world.