The Many Hats of SpokenWord: a special, unprecedented gathering of like-minded, stellar poets David Barnes, Alberto Rigettini, David Leo Sirois, Bruce Sherfield, & Troy Yorke.  Saturday, 19th December, 2015, 7:30 PM @ Berkeley Books of Paris – 8 rue Casimir Delavigne, Métro Odéon (lines 4 & 10).

The hosts of SpokenWord Paris, Open Secret, the Other Writers’ Group (at Shakespeare and Company), and the editors of THE BASTILLE magazine, all reading together at beautiful Berkeley Books.  Hear them for more than 5 minutes at a time!  Join us, and then we gonna storm the streets and bars of Paris for an impromptu SpokenWord Xmas party…

David Barnes is the founder of SpokenWord Paris and the Other Writers’ Group. He co-edited the anthology Strangers in Paris: New Writing Inspired by the City of Light (Tightrope Books, 2011) and self-publishes The Bastille Lit Magazine. He won Shakespeare & Company’s Travel In Words short story competition in 2006. His poems have been published in Spot Lit Magazine, 34th Parallel, Upstairs At Duroc, Retort Magazine and elsewhere.

Alberto Rigettini, Italian, is a poet, playwright, screenwriter, poetry pimp and freak-show barker. He is host of “SpokenWord Paris”, the fight club “Writers Get Violent” and “The Poetry Brothel in Paris”. He has been awarded The Lorca in Translation Competition, the Troubadour International Poetry Prize and his writing is included in the anthology Strangers in Paris: New Writing Inspired by the City of Light. He is currently writing a poetry collection in 5 settings: London, Spain, Italy, U.S. and France.

David Leo Sirois:
Host of (SpokenWord 2) Open Secret and doorman at SpokenWord. Born in New Brunswick, Canada, and grew up across the border in Madawaska, Maine, as a dual citizen. Living in Paris for the last 4 & 1/2 years, his poems have appeared in Anglophone Parisian magazines THE BASTILLE, Belleville Park Pages, and Paris Lit Up, The Keystone Anthology (UK), Radical Lines From a Lit City (anthology by Bob-Davis), as well as the French journal Terre à Ciel; also the US-based anthology Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations, Silo, Poesy, Ibbetson Street Press, Echoes: A Northern Maine Journal, and more – 33 publications between the two countries. TimeOut Paris described him as “a kind of Woody Allen in rhymes, who captivates the audience with a totally personal science of recitation.”  His forthcoming, 21-years-in-the-making first book, Silver Shiver Fragment, will be published by SpokenWord Paris.

Bruce Sherfield is an American artist living in Paris. He is a co-editor/designer of The Bastille and co-runs the Other Writers’ Group at Shakespeare & Company. He has been an invited artist/speaker to mentor young poets in Africa three times in 2015 courtesy of the US Embassy. His band, the Sophia Lorenians, will release its 2nd album, Sex,Tape and Girls, this fall. He is a professional voice artist and actor. He loves juicing with his friends (and enemies) and teaching his son about typewriters. Quote: “I firmly propose that every creative community can only be as strong as its least passionate members.”

Troy Yorke. Performer, Writer, Coach, Composer, Pianist, Actor. His poetry has been published internationally in small magazines and was selected for Australia’s Vine Leaves Literary Journal “Best of 2013 Anthology”. He is on the editorial team for the Paris-based magazine THE BASTILLE. His first collection of poetry, Hole in My Side, was published by corrupt press in 2014.