Gaston Miron

Gaston Miron OQ 8 January 1928 14 December 1996 was an important poet writer and editor of Quebecs Quiet Revolution His classic Lhomme rapaillé partly translated as The March to Love Selected Poems of Gaston Miron whose title echoes his celebrated poem La marche à lamour has sold over 100000 copies and is one of the most widely read texts of the Quebecois literary canon Committed to his peoples separation from Canada and to the establishment of an independent Frenchspeaking nation in North America Gaston Miron remains the most important literary figure of Quebecs nationalist movement Gaston Miron was born in SainteAgathedesMonts in the Laurentian Mountains region 100 kilometers north of Montreal His father CharlesAugust Miron was a successful carpenterentrepreneur and his death in 1940 was the decisive event of his sons childhood The next year finding herself in a precarious financial situation Gastons mother sent her son to study as a scholarship student at a Brothers of the Sacred Heart boarding school near Granby in Montérégie At Sacred Heart young Mirons plan was to pursue a career in education as a teaching brother Upon graduation however after working for a year in a school near Montreal he renounced his vows and plannedfor career as a schoolteacher His long painful march towards his vocation as a man of letters had begun Nineteenyear old Miron moved to Montreal in 1947 Conservative Maurice Duplessis reigned as Quebec premier and the Catholic Church dominated the societys popular and literary culture Miron worked for a time as an organizer and leader of the Catholic youth organization lOrder du bon temps In the evening he took courses at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Montreal but never earned a degree In 1953 with Olivier Marchand Miron published his first collection of poems Deux Sangs Two Bloods at Éditions de lHexagone an artisanal publishing company founded by the authors and four of their friends Hexagone was the first publisher in French Canada dedicated to poetry Miron would become the central force behind its contribution to Quebecois culture over the next thirty years Hexagones editorial line was to establish a national literature and put an end to the poets alienation in the society of the time Miron quickly signed young and innovative poets like JeanGuy Pilon and Fernand Ouellette thus prolonging the efforts of the modernists of the immediately preceding generation like Alain Grandbois PaulMarie Lapointe and Roland Giguère who had released their first books before the Hexagones founding and would later join its roster of authors Source Article Gaston Miron from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30