André du Bouchet lived in France until 1941, when his family left occupied Europe for the U.S. After the war he returned to France, befriending the poets Pierre Reverdy, René Char, Francis Ponge and the artists Pierre Tal-Coat and Alberto Giacometti. In 1966, with Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Dupin, Louis-René des Forêts, and Gaëton Picon, he founded the cultural review L’Ephémère. In 1961, du Bouchet’s first major poetry collection, Dans la chaleur vacante, was published to critical acclaim, and he won the Critic’s prize for that year. In 1983, he received the National Poetry Prize or “Prix national de la poésie”. André du Bouchet died in 2001 at the age of 76, in Truinas, Drôme.
