Singer and lyricist of the group Feu! Chatterton, Arthur Teboul is also a poet. His latest work “The Address” was born following the opening of a “minute poems cabinet” in Paris. For several weeks, he composed express poems for people who came to visit him.
Some offer flowers, Arthur Teboul offers poems. On March 12, 2023, he opened a temporary office, Le Déversoir, and welcomed nearly 250 visitors for a week. “The Address” is the compilation of poems composed for all these people.
A counter-current approach
Asked about the genesis of his approach at 12:30 p.m. on May 29, Arthur Teboul admits that it was the tumult of our lives that gave him the idea: “Making a stop has become complicated, we are overloaded by our phones, we are in an era of profitability.”
“My intuition turned into certainty when I saw a hundred people arriving. It proved that there was a real shared need,” he continues. As for the writing process, Arthur Teboul confides that it was complex. His poems are not born from a conversation, but from the silent presence of visitors.
After a few minutes of writing comes the moving moment of reading: “In fact, the poem is a pretext, a concretization of the human bond which is created in a few minutes in the presence of a stranger, declares Arthur Teboul. Watching someone five minutes in silence, it’s sometimes more intimate than if we had spoken to him for hours.”
Sharing experiences
A few months later, Arthur Teboul contacted all those who visited him. He sends them a message accompanied by around twenty questions, the answers to which can be found at the end of the book “The Address”. For the author, it was important to hear these plural voices: “If I had been the only one to say how extraordinary this experience was, it would have been doubtful.”
And Arthur Teboul concludes mischievously: “When we go to a poetry practice, we don’t need to be treated. We can look for a remedy, an extravagant moment, feel part of a poem, or look for signs. The freedom that the poem offers is in all that.
Comments collected by Blandine Lévite
Web adaptation: Sarah Clément
Arthur Teboul, “The address. The appointments of the Déversoir”, ed. Seghers, March 2024.
