page_title: Jacques Prévert
section_title: Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Jacques Prévert / Poetry
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le lycée Jacques-Prévert de Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine, France).
context_page_description: Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the poetic realist movement, and include Les Enfants du Paradis.
context_section_description: When Prévert was attending primary school, he at first hated writing. Later, he participated actively in the Surrealist movement. Together with the writer Raymond Queneau and Marcel Duhamel, he was a member of the Rue du Château group. He was also a member of the agitprop theater company Groupe Octobre where he helped craft a left-wing cinema in support of the causes of the Popular Front. Prévert remained supportive of left-wing causes throughout his life. In 1971, he wrote a poem in support of the communist Angela Davis after her arrest.
  Prévert's poems were collected and published in his books: Paroles (Words) (1946), Spectacle (1951), La Pluie et le beau temps (Rain and Good Weather) (1955), Histoires (Stories) (1963), Fatras (1971) and Choses et autres (Things and Others) (1973). His poems are often about life in Paris and life after the Second World War. They are widely taught in schools in France, and frequently appear in French language textbooks published worldwide. Some, such as "Déjeuner du Matin", are also often taught in American upper-level French classes, for the students to learn basics.
  Some of Prévert's poems, such as "Les feuilles mortes" ("Autumn Leaves"), "La grasse matinée" ("Sleeping in"), "Les bruits de la nuit" ("The sounds of the night") and "Chasse à l'enfant" ("The hunt for the child") were set to music by Joseph Kosma—and in some cases by Germaine Tailleferre of Les Six, Christiane Verger, and Hanns Eisler. They have been sung by prominent French vocalists, including Marianne Oswald, Yves Montand, and Édith Piaf, as well as by the later American singers Joan Baez and Nat King Cole. In 1961, French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg paid tribute to "Les feuilles mortes" in his own song "La chanson de Prévert". "Les feuilles mortes" was also translated into German by the German Poet and Liedermacher Wolf Biermann, titled "Welke Blätter", and was performed by him and others.
  More recently, the British remix DJs Coldcut released their own version in 1993. Another German version has been published and covered by Didier Caesar (alias Dieter Kaiser), which he named "Das welke Laub". "Les feuilles mortes" also bookends Iggy Pop's 2009 album, Préliminaires.
  Prévert's poems are translated into many languages worldwide. Many translators have translated his poems into English. The poet and translator Suman Pokhrel has translated some of his poems into Nepali.
caption: A large number of educational institutions bear the name of Jacques Prévert (Here, the lycée Jacques-Prévert in Burgundy)
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