Guy Goffette was born in 1947 in Jamoigne, on the French-Belgian border. He settled in nearby Harnoncourt, raised a family, and after extensive travels made his home in Paris. Poet, teacher, novelist, essayist, and editor at Éditions Gallimard for many years, Goffette was considered one of the most accomplished poets in France. Praising Goffette in a bilingual edition of his poems appearing in 2007, Yves Bonnefoy declared him “without question one of the best poets of the present moment in France.”
Goffette published his first book of poems in 1969 when he was twenty-two; he has received the Prix Mallarmé (1989), the Grand prix de poésie de la Société des gens de lettres (1999), the Grand prix de poésie de l’Académie française (2001) and the Prix Goncourt for lifetime achievement (2010). His most recent volume of poems, Paris à ma porte appeared in March 2023. Pain perdu, the collection in which these two poems are included, was published in 2020.
Guy Goffette died on March 28, 2024, at the age of 76.