Patrick Poumirau, a Franco-Moroccan writer, is an extraordinary character, he is a builder, a lover of nature, of poetry, of stones, of others. What guides his life: writing, building, leaving a trace, meeting his fellow human beings. He has written six works, was selected for the Goncourt for the first novel in 2000. He is presenting his latest novel at the Vignon-en-Quercy book festival, on November 24. “Les kakis du Mou-k'i”, adventure with twists and turns of a man who travels Europe to find his daughter whom he did not really know how to love, or perhaps he did not knew how to tell him.
Patrick Poumirau, you were a philosophy professor, but not only that?
I was a teacher for thirty years, I also traveled all over the world, I worked in a factory in Spain, very young I learned the trade of mason which almost became my profession. I resumed my studies until the philosophy aggregation but I did not take the oral exam.
It seems that in your journey, building, building is essential.
It was to pay for my studies that I worked in construction, I really learned the mason's trade, I remain attached to this contact with materials. The concept of home for me is very important. We see it clearly at the moment with the wars, all these people who no longer have a home, they no longer have anything. For thirty years I restored a hamlet of four houses which were in ruins in the Gers. It's like a book with years of work, you don't know how it's going to turn out and then it takes shape with a beginning and an end.
You continue to write and build, but this time in Corrèze.
I practice fly fishing, which brought me to the Dordogne river, which I knew a little. I found a ruin to restore near Argentat. I plan to settle there. My concern today, residing near the river, is the living, its degradation and its transformation. I am going to devote part of my writing and my actions to it.
Is writing still your main activity?
I have been writing since the age of 14, I wrote poetry for girls, I invented stories. Writing, for me, is about creating characters and a story. It's the life I would have liked to live and it's also the life I lived, it's a mixture of the two. When we write, we must forget ourselves to give others a universe from which we are absent, even if we are below the lines we must not be at the center. Thanks to the text, the reader rediscovers his passions, what he experienced, felt, everything he was unable to express. The writer is therefore the one who gives voice to those who do not have it.
Tell us about your new book in progress.
I am writing a work about human relationships, complex souls, family relationships, passion, life, death. Perhaps again about the difficult relationships between a father and his daughter.
