During the pandemic, Urbain Desbois started calling his poet friends to stave off boredom. He recorded them chatting about the weather, their little ailments, life or the passing of time. He asked them to recite some of their texts. As the days went by, the author, singer and musician had an idea: produce a series of podcasts focusing on his conversations with poets, layered with musical pieces of his own.
By making these impromptu phone calls in the middle of confinement, “I seemed like a guy in trouble who needed love! » laughs this extraordinary artist, who has released half a dozen albums over more than two decades. We talk to him on the phone, as if to be faithful to his concept of remote conversation.
“Some poets are friends, others didn’t know me. They asked themselves: “Why is he calling me? What does he want to sell me?” I told them: “You don’t have to do anything, you just have to talk to me,” he adds.
Urbain Desbois, whose real name is Luc Bonin, continues to do all kinds of musical projects even if we have seen him less at the forefront for some time. He also makes movie sets. The “Desbois” version of his life gained momentum during the pandemic: this former urbanite settled for good in Lingwick (456 inhabitants), in the Eastern Townships, where he set up a recording studio.
It was there that he designed the 10 episodes of his podcast, which feature nine poets (Marie-Hélène Montpetit, Patrice Desbiens, Emmanuelle Riendeau, Frank Martel, Marie-Andrée Gill, Michel Garneau, Carole David, Jean- Philippe Bergeron and Claudine Vachon). Telephone conversations that flow naturally, never boring, and that we imagine passing along roads lined with spruce trees, during the holiday season.
A light named Garneau
The late Michel Garneau, who died in September 2021 at the age of 82, is entitled to two episodes: the poet, playwright, actor and musician delivered a sort of testament in these two segments of half an hour each. We recognize the warm and cheerful voice of someone who remained a bon vivant until his last breath. The tone and words are reminiscent of Serge Bouchard, another giant who died in 2021.
“Garneau is the light. A well of knowledge. When he died, it was a big oak tree that fell,” summarizes Urbain Desbois.
The two artists knew each other a little. “He was happy that I called him. He said that old poets interest no one. We laughed a lot. After that, he went quietly to paradise,” says Desbois. The two episodes with Garneau, which he considers “Christmas gifts”, will be posted online on December 23.
We learn that Garneau “never threw away a book of poetry.” He also says that, “as a child, he wanted to learn to talk to animals”. This is why trout, hares and other small animals populate his writings.
Michel Garneau was a master of translation. He loved reading “absolutely wonderful insults.” After translating and spending time with Leonard Cohen, Garneau remembers an anecdote: Bob Dylan once told Cohen that he had written one of his songs in two days. Cohen explains that it takes more than two years to complete a song.
Garneau, who seems in the camp of slowness, quotes an American poet in the same breath: “I never finish poems, I abandon them. »
Meeting a bum
Urbain Desbois wanted his conversations with the poets to begin casually, in a light and informal way, so that the guests would feel at ease. And to prevent them from releasing their “cassette”. That’s why he called them without warning, most of the time. He could talk for half an hour before revealing to them that he was recording their conversations.
Excerpt from his chat with his friend Patrice Desbiens:
“Hi, it’s Urban.
— Urban who?
— Urbain Desbois.
— What wood?
— The woods of the Eastern Townships. How are you ?
— It’s not getting any worse, I’m opening a bag of chips for you. Without salt. Menoum. »
This tasty interview goes in all directions, like the work of the most Quebecois of Franco-Ontarian poets (or the most Franco-Ontarian of Quebecois poets). At 75, the artist from Timmins says he has “no tank, no cottage” and that he lives in Quebec “like a bum in a two and a half.”
“I have all kinds of illnesses, heart, liver, back.
– The head ?
— That’s correct. But I don’t have much of a voice these days. »
Messers and fools
His friend Urbain tells him that he has immersed himself in his work and that “there is some business in that head”. The poet reads extracts from Van Gogh’s little yellow radio. In the end, “Van Gogh goes mad, but no madder than anyone else.”
In Robert’s Lada, the old Soviet-era bazou “knows the way home by heart” on the streets of Sudbury. The one we nicknamed the Franco-Ontarian Bukowski also declaims A Time of Tylenolabout a “strange person who disturbs” with the sound of the “toxic tocsin of church bells”.
We feel the connection between Urbain Desbois and his guests. There are young people, old people, men and women. These masters of words have things to tell. Largely thanks to Isabelle Mandalian, from the Oscar-Dhu Cultural Center, in Lingwick, who accompanied Desbois throughout the process of creating the series. She helped put this “slightly crazy idea” in order. To the delight of our ears.