Henri Michaux was a Belgian-born French experimental poet, writer, and painter. He is renowned for his strange, highly original poetry and prose, and also for his art. The Paris Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York had shows of his work in 1978.

His autobiographical texts chronicle his psychedelic experiments with LSD and mescaline and include Miserable Miracle and The Major Ordeals of the Mind and the Countless Minor Ones. He is recognized for his idiosyncratic travelogues and books of art criticism. Michaux is also known for his stories about Plume—a peaceable man—one of the most unenterprising heroes in literature, a character subject to many misfortunes.

His poetic works have often been republished in France, where they are studied alongside significant poets of French literature. In 1955, he became a citizen of France and lived there for the remainder of his life. Michaux became a friend of Romanian pessimist philosopher Emil Cioran around the same time, along with other literary luminaries in France. In 1965, he won the grand prix national des Lettres, which he refused to accept, as he did with every honor he was accorded in his life.