Thierry Metz (1956 - 1997)

The poet Thierry Metz was born in Paris on 10 June 1956. He was self-taught, getting what books he could from a charity for the homeless. At the age of 21, he moved to Saint-Romaine-le-Noble in 1977. He worked in a range of manual labour jobs, in abbatoirs, factories, and largely on construction sites.  He was a father of three. During periods of unemployment he wrote. In 1988 tragedy struck: his second son Vincent was, at the age of eight, mowed down by a car on the main road in front of their house, and on the same day Metz was awarded the Prix Voronca for his collection Sur la Table inventée.

In 1996 he moved to Bordeaux and in October and November of that year he admitted himself voluntarily to a psychiatric ward to help in his struggles with alcohol and depression. And a month later in January 1997 he returned to the same hospital for a second stay, but took his own life on 16 April 1997.