David Barnes is the founder, organiser and one of the hosts of Spoken Word Paris.
”This is a kind of greatest hits of the past 20 years of my poetry.”
James Baldwin’s Paris comes to mind, the foreigner’s fascination and frustration. There’s an endearing vulnerability too, frank and unpretentious.
— Craig Martin Getz, poet
With his blend of philosophy, imagery and acute observation, David Barnes conjures an eclectic series of worlds for his readers to inhabit.
— Sue Burge, poet
What is most evident in David Barnes’s mode of writing is his carnival about everything that lives, breathes and dies, or never does, houses and cities, people… a fête…
— Rethabile Masilo, poet
David Barnes has been reading his poems aloud in Paris since 2003. This book contains the best of them, road-tested at the weekly open mic and writers’ community he fathered, Spoken Word Paris.
Here you’ll find poems that bite, such as ‘Pity le pauvre Parisien’, ‘Interesting Times for Generation Zed’, ‘The Corporate Goldfish’ and ‘Bitter Valentine’ alongside poems that are just fun, such as ‘Shrove Tuesday’, a poem about pancakes, ‘Owl’ and ‘She speaks fish’.
There are poems about Paris ‘with its cat hiss of coffee machines’, Paris ‘who dances by numbers but longs to release jazz…’, portraits of cafés and Parisians.
There are poems that dive into dark waters – the ties of love and suffering that bind him to his brother, mother and father back in England in a family story shaped by what could not be said, where everyone haunted their own lives.
And there are poems that express the sheer exhilaration of falling in love, such as ‘Dreaming, half dreaming, half asleep’ or the longing and regret when love cannot go anywhere – ‘Bric-a-brac’, ‘Inexhaustible’ – and the deep, everyday joys and struggles of sustained love – ‘Sunday morning market’.
To buy the book and ship to outside France (€15 + €10 post & packing = €25):
To buy the book and ship to France (€15 + €5 post & packing = €20):
SpokenWord Paris 