Robert Melançon is one of Quebec's most original poets. He won the Governor General's Award for Poetry for his collection Blind Painting and shared the Governor General's Award for Translation with Charlotte Melançon for their French version of A.M. Klein's The Second Scroll. A long-time translator of Canadian poet Earle Birney, Melançon has been the poetry columnist for the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir and the Radio-Canada program En Toutes Lettres. He lives in North Hatley, in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

Praise for Montreal Before Spring

"Rich and deceptively simple ... one of Quebec's major poets."—Globe & Mail

"Melançon deftly links seasons, the city space and their relation to age with his effortless metaphors ... A thread of romanticism throbs beneath [his] poetry, [which] is intoxicated, fascinated with experiencing the surrounding world."—New York Daily News

"Moving ... Seldom have poems in translation so quickly won me over. Melançon addresses the reader like a trusted friend, without flattery ... and free of Canadian clannishness."—Patrick Kurp, Anecdotal Evidence