Michel Bulteau is a French poet, essayist, occasional musician and experimental filmmaker, born on 8 October 1949 in Arcueil

Arcueil

Arcueil is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.-Name:The name Arcueil was recorded for the first time in 1119 as Arcoloï, and later in the 12th century as Arcoïalum, meaning "place of the arches" , in...

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Biography

When he was twenty-two, he contributed with seventeen other young poets, including Matthieu Messagier, Jean-Jacques Faussot, Jacques Ferry, Patrick Geoffrois and Thierry Lamarre to a poetry bundle entitled 'Manifeste Électrique aux paupières de jupes' (Electrical Manifesto with Eyelids of Skirts), which was published in 1971 by Le Soleil Noir. The poetry bundle entitled 'Manifeste Électrique aux paupières de jupes' was a literary manifest that caused a stir in the literary world. Encouraged by the Belgian-French poet and writer, Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux

Henri Michaux was a highly idiosyncratic Belgian-born poet, writer, and painter who wrote in French. He later took French citizenship. Michaux is best known for his esoteric books written in a highly accessible style, and his body of work includes poetry, travelogues, and art criticism...

, he continued his quest as a rebellious poet.

In 1976, he moved to New York where he became friends with beat writers, painters and pop punk musicians. Bulteau is, in the words of William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, an "explorer of untouched psychic areas."

Work

Michel Bulteau was only twenty-one years when '7, Retomba des nuits' (1970), his first book of poetry, was published. The poems in this collection are dark, tragic and desperate and are a reflection of the violence and freedom of the Beat Generation as well as the generation of black surrealism. He would publish many more poetry collections which are all characterised by a hypersensibility. This places him firmly in the tradition of great French writers such as Baudelaire, Nerval and Rimbaud. Bulteau has written that "Being modern is the most dangerous artistic route. Being modern means refusing to be untrue, unreal."(Aérer le présent, 1999).

Michel Bulteau has written more than sixty books including poetry books, biographies of famous persons associated with the beat generation and avant-garde art scene (Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, James Dean

James Dean

James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

) as well as journals and essays. He has been an editor of the Nouvelle Revue de Paris in which he published Houellebecq's early poems.

Michel Bulteau is also active as a musician. He was the lead singer of Mahogany Brain, a band with which he aimed to realise his ideal of a marriage between poetry and rock'n roll. The band played pre-punk music that was influenced by drugs (the original cover of their debut showed an arm with a syringe). Their music was a crossing of Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat and Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. The band was quite short-lived: they played their only concert in the summer of 1970 at the Lucemarie during which Bulteau threw bricks at the few members of the audience. After that they became a studio band recording two records. In December 1970 Mahogany Brain recorded the album With (Junk-Saucepan) When (Spoon-Trigger) released by the Futura label early the next year and they also provided the soundtrack to a short film of Bulteau's, Main Line. Another record, Smooth Sick Lights, was recorded on a single day in June 1972, but only released several years in 1976 later by the Pole label. Mahogony Brain issued a new record under the title With/Without in 2004 on Mello Records. Michel Bulteau has recorded a maxi 45 with Elliott Murphy

Elliott Murphy

Elliott James Murphy is an American rock singer-songwriter, novelist, producer and journalist living in Paris.-Biography:Elliott James Murphy, Jr. was born in Rockville Centre, New York to a show business family...

 (1989) and a further three solo albums during the nineties and in 2004.

Michel Bulteau has directed and contributed to a number of avant-garde movies which place him in the tradition of experimental directors such as Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...

, Stan Brackage and Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...

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Miscellaneous

Michel Bulteau appears as a character in the novel The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives is an award-winning novel published by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño in 1998. Natasha Wimmer's English translation was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007...

(Los Detectives Salvajes in Spanish) by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...

. In the novel Michel Bulteau meets one of the main characters of the novel in Paris.

Filmography

• Le destin d'un tueur. Two versions, black & white, silent, 8 mm, 3’ /color, 9’, 1963.

• Dernier Rôle. 1967.

• Une voyelle B. In collaboration with Matthieu Messagier, 1968.

• La Direction de l'odeur. A film of Matthieu Messagier. Camera : Michel Bulteau. With Jean-Pierre Cretin, Michel Bulteau, Jean-Jacques Faussot and Matthieu Messagier, 1968.

• Main Line. Camera : Michel Bulteau and Patrick Geoffrois. Music : Mahogany Brain. Actors: Adeline, Patrick Geoffrois,
Mine and Michel Bulteau, 1971.

• Asnaviràm. Music: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1974.

• Un naufrage s'offrait. Music : Matt Lucas, Little Tony and his brothers, Chris Montez. Actor : Adeline. 1974–1975.

• Impératrice. Music : Claudia Muzio. Actor: Adeline. 1974–1976.

• On the Radio, on the screen. Actor : Michel Bulteau. 1976.

• La Lisière de la miséricorde. Actor : Adeline and Michel Bulteau. 1976.

• Astérie. Camera : Philippe Puicouyoul, 1979.

• Yémen, temps du sacré. A film of Laith Abdelamir, script and text by Michel Bulteau. 1994.

• FiLm. 1995.

• M.B. né à Arcueil. Camera : Pascal Auger. 1996.

• Leila's Papers. With Natasha Fuentes and Nick Name. 1996–1998.

• Moving Back In Times. Actor: Virginie Petracco. 1999.

Discography

• With (Junk-Saucepan) When (Spoon-Trigger), with Mahogany Brain, LP, Futura Records, 1971.

Réédition CD, Mellow Records, 2001.

• Smooth Sick Lights, with Mahogany Brain, LP, Pole Records, 1976. Réédition CD,

Spalax Music, 1997.

• Spleens. with Elliot Murphy. Maxi 45T, Mix It/New Rose, 1989.

• Archidoxe. CD, Ed. Paroles d’Aube, 1994.

• Dans un monde sonore. CD, Radio France, 1997.

• Rinçures. CD, Fractal Records, 1999.

• HERO POET, LP, 2004