Cafes and Poets

Choosing a cafe in Montpellier is like choosing a spouse: finding the right one for you. I read Lonely Planet’s recommendations for

Sandwich board in front of Coffee Club

Montpellier and proceeded to avoid every one of them. Sometimes, I was looking for a place where I could write. Ambience over coffee. Other times, I wanted a place for people watching: location over coffee. Finally, there were cafes where I went to be a writing poseur, a pretend-writer, which meant I had no intention of getting any writing done, even though my manuscript was on the table next to my espresso.

It’s been said before that in France you pay for a table and coffee is the price,  the rental fee. Compare that to P

Typical serving of Pastis with water and ice

eet’s Coffee on Walnut and Vine in Berkeley, where the focus is the beverage. During afternoons at a Montpellier cafe, I ordered a Pastis, which is a lightly alcoholic anise drink served with water. You don't get that at Peet’s.

A few cafes stood out by their sandwich boards. The “No Hipsters” sign in front of one Lonely Planet-recommended establishment was particularly funny. Another place had “All You Need Is Love, And

More Coffee.” However, witty signs weren’t enough to get me to part with 4 euros for a cup of Joe.

Two locations I frequented were within a four minute walk from my flat. One was across the street from the bookstore, Le Grain des mots on Boulevard de Jeu de Paume. It was an indoor cafe with high ceilings and several people working on laptops at the tables. The baristas seemed to be college age, each

Boulevard de Jeu de Paume

one sporting a small tattoo. Unfortunately, “college age” meant they were probably new to the job, and it showed when they forgot my order.

The second place was an outdoor cafe next to the Place de la Canourgue. The tables were under the trees on a gravel median with the street on one side and grass on the other. This was where I went to enjoy an afternoon espresso or Pastis and pose as a writer.

It was at this cafe where I met Roch-Gerard Salager. I was sitting next to him, pretending to edit my manuscript. He asked me what I

was writing. When I told him it was a novel about the Japanese tea ceremony, he said he enjoyed reading Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima.

He dressed and spoke like a professor, so I was surprised when he told me he wasn’t one, and that he was a poet. I wondered how someone made it in this world as a poet, in the sense that it was a full-time occupation. I was envious and also a little suspicious that maybe the Montpellier Tourist Office had paid him to hang out in cafes to give the impression to tourist-poseurs like me that the city is an artistic sanctuary. Where else does one meet poets randomly in cafes?

Roch-Gerard handed me a copy of his work and put my suspicions

to rest. One poem was called Quelque aperçus d’un autre territoire (“Some insights from another land”), and another was called Danser en destin (“Dance in destiny”). This guy was the real deal. He said his books were on sale at Le Grain des mots, and he wrote the bookstore’s address in my journal. Unfortunately, it was the Monday after Pentecost, “Whit Monday,” and the bookstore was closed.

The following week, I stopped by Le Grain des mots on my way home from the writing cafe, and Roch-Gerard happened to be

leaving at the same time. I bought a copy of his poetry and asked him to sign it. He said he would, and he suggested doing it the next day at the outdoor cafe, if I was available to meet him?

I arrived at ten the next morning, book in hand, and found Roch-Gerard seated with three others deep conversation. They stopped to greet me, and Roch-Gerard explained how we had met the week before and then run into each other at the bookstore. He signed his book for me, and I sat down and ordered a coffee.

One of the gentlemen, Fabien, was in his thirties. He spoke enough English for us to hold a very general conversation about writing and music. He played guitar and liked to play at retirement homes because he thought music provided a healing force.

Roch-Gerard showed me a book by a woman who had been sitting with him the first day we met, and he said it was about “psycho-

Roch-Gerard's poetry

ethnography.” The example he gave was a story about a small community of polyglots who lived near Montpellier centuries ago. They lived there for several generations but had to leave during the Plague. Decades later another community formed in the same location, and they also turned out to be polyglots. The hypothesis was that place defines people.

One of Roch-Gerard’s poems is about Maguelone, which was located on an island near Palavas. He recommended I visit it. More on that in another section.