Auch: Laurent Miani, a poet from Gersois who runs after verses

There are days that change your life. For Laurent Miani, this is an evening in December 2020. An alcoholic for years, with very high daily consumption, Auscitain was urgently hospitalized. “I almost died, he says, two years later. And it was only in the hospital bed that I told myself that life was finally worth living”. He therefore decides to stop drinking and smoking overnight. A real challenge for the Gersois who consumed almost a bottle of whiskey a day.

Returning home, Laurent Miani decides to go for a walk one afternoon; during this ride, he starts running. “At that time, I didn’t have any particular passion for running, assures the former civil engineer. But I started running every day, more diligently and in all ways. Now it’s a necessity, it’s often said, to get rid of an addiction, you have to replace it with another.”

Pilgrim’s staff and notebook

With a pilgrim’s staff in one hand, the athlete travels about fifteen kilometers on the heights of Auch every day. And it writes. “Inspiration comes to me running, assures Laurent Miani, who always keeps a notebook in his pocket to write down his ideas. Sometimes I look for it, and sometimes it comes to me. An insignificant element can become the trigger for a new text. .” So Laurent Miani has been composing many songs while running for two years. They were collected in the book published a few weeks ago: “Collection of Long-distance runner (Poet of windy soles)”, (see box).

If the former patrolman has appreciated poetry since childhood, it would never occur to him to write it. This was gradually imposed during his treatment. Laurent Miani goes to his psychiatrist every two weeks with a report on his activities during the past weeks. And one day those writings took a more poetic approach: that’s when he realized he could write poetry.

“Transformation of reality and the world around us”

Just like for sports, Auscitain can no longer refrain from writing. “Sometimes I put everything together on the road, assures the runner. Or sometimes the ride allows me to find the last paragraph I was missing”. The opposite direction can completely disrupt the architecture of his songs.

Strongly “inspired and convinced” by the texts of Pierre Reverdy, Laurent Miani writes in Alexandrine. His songs revolve around three pairs of verses. All in rhyme or, as he prefers to describe them, in assonance. Chimney smoke, a wet road, a walker… Any object or detail can become the subject of a poetic text, mostly of ungrammatical composition, due to the structure of alexandrines.

But if the themes he deals with in his writings are different, “darkness is my theme, assures Laurent Miani. There is often a close relationship with death. By expressing my pain, it drives me. Poetry has this power, it transforms reality and the world around us to let’s make it more bearable”. If the poet from Gers has been sober for more than two years, he is sure of it, thanks especially to long-distance running and poetry. – I owe them my life.