Oster studied at the Collège Sainte-Croix de Neuilly, the Lycée Buffon, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and Sciences Po. His first poem, Premier poème, was published by Mercure de France in 1954 thanks to support from Pierre Jean Jouve. Quatre Quatrains gnomiques was published in La Nouvelle Revure française thanks to Marcel Arland and Jean Paulhan. His first collective work, Le Champ de Mai, was published in 1955 and won him the Prix Fénéon. In 1958, he was awarded the Prix Max-Jacob for Solitude de la lumière. He then departed to serve in the Algerian War, returning to France in 1959.
In 1961, Jean Paulhan helped set up a meeting between Oster and Saint-John Perse, who gave him great poetic motivation. He worked with Claude Tchou, who helped Oster cover Pascal Pia and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Alongside Tchou and Jean-Claude Zylberstein, he published the first complete collection of Paulhan's works. In 1992, he was awarded the Grand prix de poésie de la SGDL. He contributed to the Babel collection, published by Actes Sud, while living in Mazamet. In June 2019, Oster was awarded the Grand Prix de Poésie of the Académie française.[2]
Pierre Oster died in Paris on 22 October 2020 at the age of 87.[1]
