Prix Apollinaire 2024

Winner of the Prix Louise-Labé, Prix Max-Jacob and now the Prix Apollinaire, Micèle Finck has published several collections of poetry, including Balbuciendo, La Troisième main and Connaissance par les larmes, published by Editions Arfuyen. Her artistic collaborations have also led her to compose booklets, essays on poetry and its dialogue with the arts, and to take part in film projects.

His collection La Voie du large (éditions Arfuyen) was awarded the Prix Apollinaire 2024 :

Since Balbuciendo (2012), Michèle Finck has been building an intense, structured body of poetic work, blending autobiography, culture, prose and song. Her books, imbued with depth, navigate between light and shadow. With La Ballade pour les hommes-nuages (2021), she begins a song of love and serenity, continued in La voie du large, where the marine theme brings light and calm. Structured in seven movements, this collection explores the transformation of doubt into grace, brought about by music, which acts like the sea: both embrace and deliverance, a space of spiritual reparation.

Blandine Merle, winner of the Prix Apollinaire Découverte 2024 :

Born in 1981, Blandine Merle has a degree in Modern Literature and teaches at a secondary school in Poitiers. In 2011, she decided to take a leave of absence from the French Ministry of Education to devote herself to writing, and published her first collection of poems, Par obole (Cheyne éditeur), which won her the Prix de la Vocation. At the same time, she contributed to several literary magazines and ran writing workshops, sharing her passion for words and creativity. Naître et mourir, her second collection, confirms her poetic commitment and her exploration of the themes of life and death.

His collection Naître et mourir (published by Gallimard) was awarded the Prix Apollinaire Découverte 2024 :

“Sometimes we experience opposing events simultaneously. On two occasions, for example, I was expecting a child and at the same time found myself at the bedside of people who were about to die. While I may have felt diametrically opposed to their situation, I was amazed to discover how our two expectations were so closely linked: the mystery of origins is no less silent than that of the end. I wrote these poems in an attempt to transcribe my amazement”. Blandine Merle.

Aïssa Maïga, patron of the Prix Apollinaire 2024

The Prix Apollinaire 2024 was honored by the presence of actress and director Aïssa Maïga as godmother, a literature enthusiast who enriched the event by reading poems by the winners.

The Apollinaire Prize

The Prix Apollinaire, founded in 1941, is awarded each year “without any dogmatism of school or technique, to a collection characterized by its originality and modernity”. It is considered a Goncourt of poetry – partly because some members of the jury were or are Goncourt jurors, such as Hervé Bazin, Robert Sabatier or Tahar Ben Jelloun.

Chaired by Jean-Pierre Siméon, the jury is made up of leading figures from the world of poetry: Marc Alyn, Adeline Baldacchino, Linda Maria Baros (general secretary), Tahar Ben Jelloun, Zéno Bianu, Patricia Castex Menier, Philippe Delaveau, Anne Dujin, Jean Portante and Jean Rouaud.

Since 2016, the Prix Apollinaire has been awarded at Les Deux Magots, and endowed thanks to the generosity of Catherine Mathivat, president of our café-restaurant.