Alexandre Ferrere : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

There are so many! But other than Robert Creeley, to whom I will be returning to in another question, Allen Ginsberg is definitely a major influence in my attitude towards poetry. He taught me about poetic energy, offered me the opportunity to study poets as different as Blake, Whitman, Williams, Mayakosky and so on. In his poems, every subject and every person are likely to be poetry and I sincerely think that this is the heart of poetry. He also developed a very interesting personal conception of poetic lineage: only time and space could work as dividing walls—but poetry acts on another level, which is transcendence and which units de facto.

I have also been interested a lot by Jacques Prévert’s poetry, and not only because he is taught early in schools, here in France. I had the chance to work in his last home near where I live (now a museum) and was engulfed with emotions in that place. I have always been drawn to his poetry, which is thoughtful and popular at the same time, but it has now a personal and singular echo in my life.