SpokenWord Paris

Theme – Raw
Place – Place Louis Aragon (Western end of the Île Saint-Louis)
Day – Moon day, 31st August
Time – Gather there from 8pm. Poetics begin at 9pm.
More info – check the Facebook event

Monday Aug 10th – theme Hot & Cold
Monday Aug 17th – theme On the Road

Meet at the Place Louis Aragon from 8pm. It’s the western end of the Île Saint-Louis. Open air poetry starts at 9pm. If you can’t find us, text +33 626901326 Bring your own drink.

We’ll probably wind up in a bar after the words have been said, the songs sung.

Who was Louis Aragon?
Poet, surrealist, Communist, journalist and editor, novelist. Born in Paris in 1897, involved in Dada before founding the surrealist review Littérature with André Breton. Many of his poems were put to music and sung. He died in 1982.

The essentials

I love you by black paths
Like those who have no home
And who walk all night
Everywhere, exerting themselves
I write your name on all the walls
That my love won’t die with me
Let them be memory at my whisper
And proof of where I passed

Where I lost my human shadow
Where I mixed living and my dreams
Where I took your hand in my palm
And crossed your steps with my steps
So much that finally the time that rises
As well as a perfume, complete
The dawn of us whose wonder
Is that we will not see it

— from ”Je t’aime par les chemins noirs”

David (technical assistance) and Cesar (poetry) in July.

Here’s a poem he wrote in 1944 about his city:

Paris

Où fait-il bon même au coeur de l’orage
Où fait-il clair même au coeur de la nuit
L’air est alcool et le malheur courage
Carreaux cassés l’espoir encore y luit
Et les chansons montent des murs détruits

Jamais éteint renaissant de la braise
Perpétuel brûlot de la patrie
Du Point-du-Jour jusqu’au Père-Lachaise
Ce doux rosier au mois d’août refleuri
Gens de partout c’est le sang de Paris

Rien n’a l’éclat de Paris dans la poudre
Rien n’est si pur que son front d’insurgé
Rien n’est ni fort ni le feu ni la foudre
Que mon Paris défiant les dangers
Rien n’est si beau que ce Paris que j’ai

Rien ne m’a fait jamais battre le coeur
Rien ne m’a fait ainsi rire et pleurer
Comme ce cri de mon peuple vainqueur
Rien n’est si grand qu’un linceul déchiré
Paris Paris soi-même libéré

Louis Aragon, 1944

Cheers all,
David Barnes
Organiser

SpokenWord in Paris… open air and off-line… Monday July 13th

Spoken World Online… featuring Bill Strangmeyer… theme LIFETIMES… Tuesday July 14th

And we’re back!
with an outdoor SpokenWord in Paris.

Gather at the Chat Noir from 8pm on Monday 6th July.
At 8.45pm we’ll set off for a secret open air, outdoors location nearby.
At 9pm the poetry starts!

Chat Noir address – 76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011. Metro Parmentier or Couronnes.

The exact location of the SpokenWord will be posted here and here closer to the time.

Meanwhile in cyberspace…

Spoken World Online continues – theme: Stillness
An online Spoken Word for these strange times.
Now hosted by David Leo Sirois.
Sign up from 8pm.
Poetics begin 8.30pm.

Cheers all,
David Barnes
Organiser

Jose Padua’s first full length book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by former poet laureate Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is now out from the University of Arkansas Press. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Bomb, Salon.com, Beloit Poetry Journal, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Unbearables, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and others. He has written features and reviews for Salon, The Weeklings, NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times, and has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and many other venues. He was a featured reader at the 2012 Split This Rock poetry festival and won the New Guard Review’s 2014 Knightville Poetry Prize. After spending the past ten years with his wife (the poet Heather L. Davis) and children in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he and his family are back in his hometown, Washington DC. His poetry and essays appear regularly at Vox Populi (voxpopulisphere.com) and he writes the blog Shenandoah Breakdown (shenandoahbreakdown.wordpress.com/).

An online Spoken Word for these strange times.
Thanks to a Zoom room provided by The University of the 3rd Horizon.

Sign up from 8pm.
Poetics begin 8.30pm

A special event combining the usual spoken word open mic with the première of the short film Coldhearts, a poetical.

Coldhearts is the world’s first ever Poetical – like a musical but where poetry drives the feel, flow, color and chemistry of the film. It was shot in Paris last year and this will be the first ever screening.

Watch the trailer here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z_ftvjHrUM

For the spoken word open mic there will be 2 rounds – one before the film and one after – & the theme will be cold hearts.

8pm Zoom room opens, sign up for open mic
8.30pm Spoken word open mic (round 1) on Zoom
9.30pm Watch Coldhearts première on the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCcTTdB9KNcU6–oy9hLbDA
You can also post comments on YouTube.
10pm Back to the Zoom room for discussion of the film including responses to comments.
10.20pm-10.30pm Spoken word open mic round 2 starts on Zoom
(All times are Paris times)

So pour yourself a glass of wine if that’s your thing
and join us to read or listen to the poetry and to watch the film.

Cheers all,
David Barnes

9pm start for Spoken World Online tonight.
(Not the usual 8.30pm.)
Sign up possible beforehand by emailing spokenwordparis@gmail.com
Theme – Storms Guest poet – Arielle Cottingham
Please help us by spreading the word!
Apologies for the late change.

— David Barnes (Organiser)

Texas-born Afro-Latinx performance artist, dancer, and Pushcart-nominated poet Arielle Cottingham is an internationally touring whirlwind. With a degree in theatre and an Australian Poetry Slam Championship under their belt, they explore the interplay between the word and the body, merging elements of dance and physical theater with written poetry to create multidisciplinary short works they have toured through the US, Australia, and Southeast Asia, from the mamaks of Kuala Lumpur to the Sydney Opera House. Their work has been published in BOOTH, Pressure Gauge Press, About Place Journal, and elsewhere, and their first collection, Black and Ropy, was published by Pitt Street Poetry.