Quebec Scene

Paul-Marie Lapointe

Paul-Marie Lapointe is one of Quebec’s most honoured poets and a central figure in the world of newspapers, magazines and broadcasting. His poetry has been widely translated. He was born in Saint-Félicien, Quebec in 1929, and studied at the Chicoutimi seminary, at Collège Saint-Laurent and finally at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. As a journalist, he worked as a reporter for L’événement (Quebec City, 1950–54), La Presse (Montreal, 1954–61), and the Nouveau Journal (Montreal, 1960–61), and as editor-in-chief of Maclean’s (1963–69). From 1969 to 1992 he held various positions at Radio-Canada. He was one of the founders of the Montreal-based literary quarterly Liberté, and worked for the publisher Éditions de l’Hexagone. His numerous awards and honours include the Prix Athanase-David (1971) for lifetime artistic contribution; the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry (1971) for his anthology Le Réel absolu; the International Poetry Forum Award (Pittsburgh, PA, 1976); the Prix La Presse (1980); the Prix Léopold-Senghor (1998) for world poetry in the French language; and the Prix Gilles-Corbeil (1999) for lifetime artistic achievement. Paul Marie Lapointe is a member of the Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois. He received an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal in 2001.