French satirical poet, anarchist polemicist, essayist, and translator, active in Paris in the 1890s and early 1900s. His most well-known poetry collections, Au Pays du mufle (1891) and Imbéciles et gredins (1900) have retained their insulting wit and verve, which blends the street slang of the outer faubourgs (suburbs) of Paris with the rich language of a broad-ranging culture.
After Tailhade moved away from the hinterlands of his birth and took up residence in Paris, he began a bohemian city lifestyle he had always hoped for, consuming opium and befriending the poets Paul Verlaine, Jean Moréas and Albert Samain.
Tailhade soon developed an anarchist and anticlerical attitude in his poems and polemic essays. His polemical writings led him to be lambasted by the press and resulted in him being jailed for a year on the charge of “provoking murder”. After December 1893, Tailhade became well-known (albeit notoriously so) after he proclaimed his admiration for a terrorist attack by an anarchist named Vaillant.
In an ironic twist, Tailhade was himself the victim of an unrelated terrorist attack several months later, when a bomb was exploded at a restaurant Tailhade was in. Although the explosion destroyed one of Tailhade’s eyes, he did not recant his support for the anarchists; indeed, he continued to state his support for anarchism with renewed vigour.
Later in life he met the young English poet Wilfred Owen, who was working for nearly two years from 1913 at Bordeaux as an English language tutor. The two men later corresponded in French, before Owen was killed on military service in 1918.
Tailhade used various pseudonyms including Azède, El Cachetero, Dom Junipérien, Lorenzaccio, Patte-Pelue, Renzi, and Tybalt.
While living in Paris, Tailhade became addicted to opium. He died on 2 November 1919 at age 65 in Combs-la-Ville.

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