Guillevic

Born in 1907 in Carnac in Brittany, Eugene Guillevic began writing poetry as a child at school, where he encountered Jean La Fontaine’s fables, learning many of them by heart (an experience that would influence much of Guillevic’s poetry). After completing his Baccalaureate in Mathematics, Guillevic went on to serve as Inspecteur d’Economie Nationale for the Ministry of France. His career, with its legal and managerial demands, had a significant and firm effect on his poetry, which moves away from the Surrealist “obsession” with the Image, and toward the clarity of the Object. Guillevic received Le Grand Prix de Poésie from the French Academy in 1976 and Le Grand Prix National de Poésie in 1984.