The Piché Prize
(sponsored by the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières)

The Piché Prize, created in the memory of the late Alphonse Piché, is awarded to poets who have not yet had their work published formally. Applicants are required to submit a poetic sequence of roughly twenty texts, in verse or prose. This year, some sixty manuscripts were received by the jury, which included France Mongeau (poet), Bernard Pozier (poet and editor of Écrits des Forges) and Jacques Paquin (poetry columnist and French professor at UQTR).

The winner of the grand prize, takes home $2000, awarded by the University of Québec (Trois-Rivières), while the Fondation Les Forges offers $500 to the runner-up. The winning texts are also included in the collection «Poèmes du lendemain» published by Écrits des Forges.

The 2006 Piché Prize for Poetry has been awarded to Annick Chauvette, for her prose-poem sequence «On exclut la personne qui parle» a virulent, hard-hitting work that lures readers into the grim vortex of a narrator who longs desperately to be recognized by a world that fiercely negates her. If, as her title suggests, we exclude the person who speaks, then the entity without a face— family ? society ?— spends her days renouncing everything, including life itself :  « Tu dois ranger l'orage dans un tiroir, le plus éloigné, le petit dernier, fermer les yeux sur tous les scalpels» (You must leave the storm in a drawer, the last one, tucked away, shut your eyes to all the scalpels)  Members of the jury commended her for the strength and singularity of her images— notably, those of the mother, the inner disorder, the pain.

Honourable mention goes to Marie-Pier Laforge-Bourret for her poetry sequence «Journée», a breathlessly-written journal detailing the moments leading up to death and the upheaval of a conscience as it incrementally grapples with « the end ». Members of the jury cited a maturity and clarity in the writing, the poet's ability to create a sense of urgency and suspense without going overboard. Because, as the poem reminds us, « tomorrow arrives at top speed. » 

1989 Hélène Boissé de Sherbrooke 
1990 Aline Poulin de Sherbrooke 
1991 Michel Pleau de Québec 
1992 Louise-Anne Blouin de Québec 
1993 Martine Audet de Montréal 
1994 Micheline Boucher de Charlesbourg 
1995 Dominique Gaucher de Laval 
1996 Carole Huynh Guay de Québec 
1997 Carl Lacharité de Trois-Rivières
1998 Béatrice Migneault de Windsor
1999 Anne-Marie Cizeau-Lemercier de Québec
2000 Monique Benoit de Montréal
2001 Isabelle Forest de Québec
2002 Andréa Raymond, Ottawa
2003 Patrick Boulanger (Trois-Rivières)
2004 Huguette Lefrançois (Québec)
2005 Michèle Blanchet (Québec).

- 30 -

-30-

Information : Maryse Baribeau, Managing Director
International Poetry Festival
Telephone : (819) 379-9813

E-mail : mbaribeau@fiptr.com
Web site: www.fiptr.com