Arthur Teboul: "A poet is as useful as an osteopath or a florist"

One does not baptize his band with the name of a poet with impunity! In this case: the English Rimbaud… Thomas Chatterton, died in 1770, at just 17 years old. Arthur Teboul recognizes it: poetry occupies a central place in his life. Passionate about literature, like all the musicians of the group Fire! Chatterton, he let the words of others infuse him for a long time before daring to take up his pen. The singer publishes today his first collection* of poems with the editions Seghers and he multiplies what he calls the poetic consultations. On the occasion of the Spring of Poets, he confides in Point what poetry has brought him.

Le Point: You write, in the preamble of your book, that you had a kind of poetic revelation on January 12, 2016 in the metro. What really happened that day?

“I took my heart to the morrow / Nothing remembered that comes to me / The stones always laugh to see you / Uninhabited poor orphan / Who from an abstract moon / Made you beautiful like a poet. »

For you it has become like intellectual gymnastics. You could even say a spiritual exercise…

Yes. I was amazed by the benefits that this writing exercise gave me. This prompted me to repeat the experience. Today, I write a poem or several texts every day. It has become like a lifestyle. I have always been convinced of the usefulness of poetry. Like Jean Cocteau, “I know that poetry is essential, but I don’t know what for”. In other words, I have a strong belief that it’s absolutely necessary for me, even if I don’t know what it’s for. I didn’t invent anything. We feel that poetry is making a strong comeback in our society today.

Several initiatives have multiplied, in fact, since the end of the 1990s: first there were the poetic intervention brigades of the National Dramatic Center of Reims which landed in the schools of Champagne to recite verses to the pupils, then the poetic consultations by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Fabrice Melquiot at the Théâtre de la Ville.

We could add an even older initiative, Dial-A-Poem, in 1968. This telephone service, set up in New York by the artist John Giorno, made it possible to reach a switchboard operator who read a poem on the phone. . This need for poetry is buried in each of us. It is old in my house since it dates back to my high school years. I’ve always been a little whimsical. Poetry was for me like viaticum. I remember I was shouting at my classmates with an intriguing question that helped break the ice. A formula that would have its place in my collection.

What was that formula?

“Are you carnival or Carnavalet?” “I had imagined this question with a friend from the college I was seeing then in the 20th arrondissement. This boy was called Emilien. I talk about it in one of my first songs, “At Dawn”. In short, we interviewed our friends but also people we didn’t know yet and that opened up the field of possibilities. This is how I started many conversations that led to deep friendships. Especially with Sébastien Wolf.

And you, then, are you more carnival or Carnavalet?

Carnival, definitely!

Let’s go back to this meeting with Sébastien Wolf, who is now behind both the keyboard and the guitar of Fire! Chatterton. So it all happened at Louis-le-Grand. Was it poetry that brought you together?

In a way, yes. I came from a college in a priority education zone in the north of Paris. And, when I joined this school, I was clearly not at the level of the other students. I had to work a lot to catch up with my little comrades. In second grade, I remember myself in the study room whipping around while a small group of friends play in the yard. They were cool, now we would say “popular”. Sébastien and Clément [Doumic, the band’s guitarist, editor’s note] were part of it. On the first day of the premiere, by chance I found myself sitting next to Sébastien. I immediately asked him my famous question “Are you carnival or Carnavalet?” This was the start of the story.

What kind of poetry were you reading back then?

I was in my Lautréamont period. The discovery of the Songs of Maldoror was a shock. I didn’t understand everything, but I recited these texts like incantations. Breton, Aragon, Reverdy and Éluard followed. I started to write poems that I submitted to the group that we soon formed with Sébastien, Clément, then Antoine Wilson and Raphaël de Pressigny. These texts were of paramount importance to me. I recited them to them while they were playing music… When they weren’t wrapped up, I burned them.

What does poetry mean to you?

It’s a way of preserving in me a part of my childhood which is running away. The more we grow, the less we accept our childishness. Now poetry is one; like the drawing that I started practicing with my wife again during confinement. Agreeing to put down on paper what you feel at the moment t is to experience the incredible pleasure of finding yourself again entirely centered on yourself. There is a childish joy in reinventing the world in this way. It is an exhilarating experience that can be compared to prayer.

I corresponded for a long time with Christian Bobin. He, too, saw poetry in this way: a way to ignite sparks of life. A little light drives out a lot of darkness, says the sage. You just have to dare to push the door. Don’t be intimidated by the material. In a word, be uninhibited. Don’t be afraid to play with words. From their association are born images, treasures that awaken the marvelous part that life conceals. For those who practice poetry with sincerity, the only risk is to disappoint the concordance of tenses, grammar and spelling. I threw myself headlong into this poetic adventure without really knowing where it would lead me…

This led you to publish a collection. How did you end up at Seghers?

I have been reading the authors published in this illustrious house for a long time. Its catalog is a pantheon. One day, Antoine Caro, its director, contacted me after a radio interview where I had spoken about poetry. I didn’t tell him right away that I was writing about it. It wasn’t the first time an editor had approached me; I preferred to wait a bit to get to know him better before revealing myself. I ended up texting him. He answered me enthusiastically.

You began, in parallel, to offer poetic consultations to the public, first at the Forma gallery in Paris then, by teleconference, on social networks. How did this idea come about?

This desire to share poetry with others came before the collection. Since I experienced, myself, the benefits of these minute poems every day, I told myself that I should offer others to experience what happens in these moments. I decided that I was going to turn this solitary practice of writing into a collective game. To do this, I had to be able to receive people in a consulting room. My wife [the decorator Mégane Servadio of the Etttore agency] designed an auspicious decor. The Forma gallery welcomed us rue de Turenne. It was in this warm setting that I received more than 200 people for a week. The sessions were all set on the same model. After a brief exchange, I wrote a text dictated by the simple presence of the people sitting in front of me. I read them and then gave them this poem. They were leaving with.

Have you kept no record of it?

Yes. I scanned them, like doctors do with prescriptions.

The analogy with medicine is strong. Do you think poetry really has a therapeutic dimension?

It depends on what you mean by that term. Of course, poetry doesn’t cure illnesses, but it heals souls. I became aware of it after high school, when I entered prep and then joined a business school [Sup de Co Paris, NDLR]. I realized immediately that I had made a mistake. From the first executive management course, I knew this kind of school was not for me. I lived there an episode of what I can now describe as a major depression. It was reading poetry that got me out of there. These texts played a role of compass for me.

Which authors have given you a boost?

Wilde, Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly and Apollinaire, among others. These rebel personalities supported me in these weeks. They vented the anger I was feeling. But I also took away a lot from another reading, this one away from poetry: Stefan Zweig’s biography of Erasmus. She opened my eyes to how I could reconcile reason and passion. There is always a way to articulate your dreams into reality. This is also one of the challenges of poetry.

Can you tell us about a particularly memorable poetic consultation or two?

As I told you, I did more than 200 sessions in one week [from March 12 to 19, editor’s note]. All were a very strong moment. A lot of things happened in these meetings. Including in the silences. Communication isn’t just about words. Exchanges also pass through looks. Face-to-face can be an experience that is difficult to express. Maybe a little mystical.

But let’s take examples. I receive a young woman one evening. We chat about things and others. And, when writing his poem, I tell him, like everyone else, to look at the drawing hanging on the wall because I don’t like people looking at me when I write. She observes the drawing and begins to draw patterns on the carpet with her feet. I realize that she is reproducing the motif of the painting on the wall [two dancers by Matisse, editor’s note]. I let her. Then, at the end, I tell her with a smile that it’s funny, a boy did the same thing as her that very morning. She asks me to describe it to her. I comply. She tells me it’s her boyfriend. He hadn’t told her about his session though! Another time the image of a hike in the Pyrenees came to me. I write it in the poem, which is unusual when you think about it. And the person tells me, with amazement, that she comes from the Pyrenees. It’s proof that human relationships go beyond pure rationality, isn’t it?

Does this mean that poetry allows magical connections?

It is in any case a distorting mirror where one can discover an infinity of things that give meaning to life. And that’s why I’m convinced that this profession of public poet or “pourer”, as I’ve called it, has a great social utility. I find it hard to understand how we could have been without it for so long. A poet is as useful as an osteopath or a florist.

What is the state of a poet who does about 40 minute-writing sessions a day?

That’s the question I asked myself when I started. I dreaded leaving these marathon days exhausted. But that didn’t stop me from getting started… I’m one of those who do things without thinking too much. “Do and you will understand” is one of my mantras. When you embark on a project, it is sometimes better not to think about the consequences. If you start to project yourself, if you think you know how things are going to unfold, you can quickly be frightened by the chain of things that you will inevitably cause. The natural reaction is then to prefer not to move. I knew the sessions would be numerous: the public registered in droves for these consultations. Sometimes I started at 9 a.m. on some days and finished at 1 a.m. Was I going to be harassed? And would I manage to write for each of the people who came? I left these questions open.

Now that the week has passed, I can say that I have been more filled than emptied by this experience; and that I found inspiration for everyone: simply because I wasn’t looking to create something but just to let what was happening during the session flow onto a sheet. I can’t wait to start over. I started doing it in teleconsultation on Instagram, but the practice will reopen later.

You are currently in artistic residency at the Louvre with the other musicians of Feu! Chatterton. What is it all about?

We meet every day in a space that the museum has made available to us. It’s in the basement, we can make a lot of noise without disturbing visitors. We hang out in the galleries, admire paintings and sculptures. We are going to stay there for two months to write new songs. We are going to give three concerts there. Management gives us carte blanche. We can invite whoever we want. It’s both marvelous and a bit dizzying to compose like this. You have to be respectful of the setting but also irreverent, because we know very well that we are here in a former royal palace where many court artists succeeded one another before us. It is very likely that I will propose a musical reading of certain poems.