D'Amerique, Jean
Biography
Born in 1994 in Côte-de-Fer in Haiti, in 2019 Jean D’Amérique and the Loque urbaine collective founded the Port-au-Prince Poetic Trance Festival, of which he is the artistic director. A poet and playwright, he is a vocal champion of the new generation of Haitian writers. He divides his time between Paris, Brussels and Port-au-Prince, and was artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris from October to December 2020. He is the author of two plays – ‘Avilir les ténèbres’ (2018, shortlisted for the Prix RFI Théâtre) and ‘Cathédrale des cochons’ (Théâtrales, 2020, Prix Jean-Jacques Lerrant at the Journées de Lyon, shortlisted for the Prix RFI Théâtre) – and has also published three well-received collections of poetry: ‘Petite fleur du ghetto’ (Atelier Jeudi soir, 2015, special mention for the Prix René Philoctète, shortlisted for the SGDL Prix Révélation Poésie), ‘Nul chemin dans la peau que saignante étreinte’ (Cheyne, 2017, winner of the Prix de la Vocation awarded by the Fondation Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, shortlisted for the Prix Fetkann de Poésie) and ‘Atelier du silence’ (Cheyne, 2020).
