Born at Longueuil, Québec, he studied at the Séminaire Sainte-Croix then at Collège Saint-Laurent. Chamberland graduated in philosophy at Université de Montréal. In 1965, he enters Sociological Litterature Sdudies at la Sorbonne, Paris, France. Since 1985, he is professor of creative writing at the Département d'études littéraires, Université du Québec, Montréal.

Chamberland was the most iconoclastic Québec poet of the 1960s and one of the most innovative essayists of the 1970s. His first collections of poetry cried out "the savage need for liberation."

He rejected "unidimensional" politics after 1968, and as prophet and mystic he announced the arrival of "the Kingdom" and named the "Agents of the Future" - the Hommenfandieux and Essaimour. Some of his books were written as manifestos. He was the writer-animator of the "Fabrike d'ékriture" and a contributor to the magazines "Mainmise" and "Hobo-Québec".

Chamberland's books of the 1980s continued to explore the "resolutely lucid delirium" of his earlier works