Robert Simon — Plume d’OR (Golden Pen)
Author, Poet (of memory)
Originally from Dorengt, in the heart of Thiérache, Robert Simon draws the material of his writing from his memories, his encounters and the observation of everyday life. From his adolescence he keeps the values that run through his texts: keeping one’s word, caring for others and a taste for patient work.
Settled for several years in Épinay-sur-Seine, where he has built solid friendships, he writes with a deep attachment to his roots and an affection for his present life. His birthplace, now abandoned, thus finds in his words a place that time cannot entirely take away from it.
A Plume d’OR, he makes his notebook a companion he never leaves behind and poetry a living memory. Discovered late in life, the great authors nourish his path and encourage him to seek his own voice. He writes, crosses out, starts again, until he finds the words that feel right to him.
His personal and sensitive writing reflects a desire to preserve the faces, places and moments he holds dear. For Robert Simon, poetry is not only a refuge: it is a transmission, a way of handing a life on to those who will come after. Each verse becomes a vigil against oblivion, a trace left in time so that voices, places and memories do not vanish. To take up the pen is to fulfil his “duty against forgetting” and to give memory a chance to endure.
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To our readers of Francophone poetry
There are pens that write, and pens that dwell within us. Robert SIMON, Plume d'OR, is one of them. Through his poems he offers far more than verses: he offers a mirror. Word after word, we often relive our own experiences, yesterday’s loves, our childhood paths, our silences and our impulses. With him, we go for a walk. We wander around the bend of a memory, we pause at the edge of an emotion. And almost without noticing, we relive our past, with all that is sweetest and truest in it. His poetry has this rare strength: it leaves no one unmoved. It touches, comforts, awakens. It speaks to everyone, because it speaks of all of us. We invite you to read him, to read him again, and to let yourself be carried away.
Yours, in poetry.