Velter, now 58, devoted years to writing poems, rather than teaching poetry or taking up better paying jobs at universities-quite a fad for poets in France, he says. He has a doctoral degree in philosophy and modern history from Sorbonne University in Paris.
But cash isn't always easy to come by when you are just a poet.
He once compiled an encyclopedia on work tools-perhaps the thickest and most comprehensive in the French language-in his own words. The project was inspired by his grandfather, who ran a copper basin factory, and the royalty fees from the book kept him going for the next five years.
At other times, he wrote guides for tourists and small books for artists.
He also hosted a radio program on poetry for 30 years. The daily show was so popular that at its peak, it had about 1 million listeners, according to the French media. "I started the show to bring the power of voice back to French poetry," he says. Chinese poets have also appeared on his show.
Velter believes poetry is like music and the charm of poems is in reciting them aloud. "I blend my life with poetry. Just keep its pace as cheerful as with dancing," he says, clicking his fingers to jazz playing in the background during the interview with China Daily at Peking University in Beijing. He also has a jazz band in Paris.
Velter left the radio show in 2008 because he thought its success would stifle his creativity. "I'm in a constant state of movement. Even if I'm staying somewhere writing, I need to get up very 30 minutes."
Born in northern France, Velter first published his poems in 1964. He traveled widely, including in China, and met painter Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji) in the '70s, and American poet Allen Ginsberg in the '60s.
Chen Shucai, a veteran translator and researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, describes Velter's poems as lyrical and emotionally strong. "He has a keen fondness toward oriental spirituality, making his poems dialectic and full of wisdom," Chen, himself a poet, says.
In 1988, Velter traveled from Pakistan to China. Talking about the time, he says he bought small notebooks to write a poem each night that he waited for the Beijing traffic to move. "I saw and experienced so many things that I couldn't stop writing." On his latest trip, Velter revisited some of those roads. "They're almost all highway now."
Velter notices a similar upward mobility in contemporary Chinese poetry. French publishing house Gallimard will soon publish Luo Ying's collection of poems titled Le Gene du Garde Rouge de Luo Ying, from the poet's experience during the "culture revolution" (1966-76), as their first Asian poet featured.
"His poems are like mine. Both are written in colloquial modern language and show the spirit of motion," Velter says of Luo.
Poets in both France and China face the challenge of writing in modern times, he says, citing the example of Charles Baudelaire, a 19th-century French modernist poet.
Velter believes sound and musical rhythms are important to poetry. And poets create poems of their time and they create poetry based on the sounds and voices of their time. "Baudelaire never heard the sound of a jet plane or jazz music. So we have the chance to evolve contemporary poetry with the sound and voices of our time."
According to Xu Shuang, a professor and translator with Paris' Diderot University, Velter's unique vernacular poems shed a light on French poets and on poets from other countries.
"Poetry is what the poets sing in a room full of echoes, with the echoes coming back from all over the world," Velter says.
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