Laura Thurlow is a writer, filmmaker and musician originally from Toronto, Canada. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, and a Masters in Film Directing. Her recent endeavour is a short film called Shirley & Jane, starring Kate Dickie and Rosaleen Linehan. She did her first real slam in Paris in September, and was invited to go to Manchester with folks from Paris to compete in the Commonword European Slam Final. This past March, she had a show on in London, at the Drayton Arms Theatre titled Romance at The End of The World. She’s never had any poetry published- but she’s also not really tried yet ! It’s all a bit new! Plans for a chapbook this summer have halted with the pandemic – so for now she is best found @Laurelbrae on Instagram. She hopes to return to Paris very soon, but is enjoying quarantine in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland.An online Spoken Word for these strange times.
Thanks to a Zoom room provided by The University of the 3rd Horizon.
Thanks to a Zoom room provided by The University of the 3rd Horizon.
Sign up from 8pm.
Poetics begin 8.30pm
In Emma’s own words: “Emma Black was born in Paris of an Irish parent and an American parent. You will find her using her Anthropology degree as an excuse to blatantly stare at attractive strangers in the metro, “for research purposes”. She is the winner of no awards, has published no books, and has accomplished nothing noteworthy whatsoever. 
Suzanne Allen was born and raised in Southern California, but she thinks of Paris as her home away from home thanks to the amazing writers she’s come to know there. While studying French as an undergrad in 2005, she stumbled upon The Other Writers Group at Shakespeare & Company, and after completing her MFA, she returned to Paris and served for two years as the Creative Writing Program Director for WICE, a volunteer organization for Anglophones. She has since been honored to serve long-distance as a coeditor for The Bastille. Her poems appear online and in print journals and anthologies such as Tears in the Fence, Spillway, Pearl, Nerve Cowboy, Cider Press Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Not a Muse, Strangers in Paris and Villanelles from Everyman’s Pocket Poetry Series. She has two chapbooks: verisimilitude from corrupt press, and Little Threats from Picture Show Press. She lives in Long Beach, California with her dog, Filou.
David Leo Sirois was born in Edmundston, New Brunswick, Canada, & grew up across the border in Madawaska, Maine. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Village, The Sunday Tribune Online, The Opiate, Those That This, THE BASTILLE, The Bioptic Review, Belleville Park Pages, Two Words For, Paris Lit Up, Terre à Ciel (which also published his translations of Paul Valéry, Adéline Baldacchino, & Déborah Heissler). Altogether, he has published over 75 pieces, including his work in The Keystone Anthology (Guildford, England), the anthology Vignettes & Postcards from Paris, & in the U.S., the anthology Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations, as well as Silo, Bennington College’s literary magazine, Poesy, & more. He is currently submitting two manuscripts for publication.
El Habib Louai is a Moroccan Amazigh poet, translator, musician and high school teacher of English. He took creative writing courses at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado where he performed with Anne Waldman and Thurston Moore. His articles, poems and Arabic translations of Beat Poets such as Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman, William S Burroughs, Bob Kaufman, Joanne Kyger, Amiri Baraka, Neeli Cherkovski and many others appeared in international literary magazines, journals and reviews like Big Bridge Magazine, Berfrois, Charles River Journal, Militant Thistles, The Fifth Estate, The Dreaming Machine, Al Quds Al Arabi, Arrafid, Al Doha, Al Faisal, Lumina, The Poet’s Haven, The MUD Proposal, the Dreaming Machine, Sagarana and Istanbul Literary Review. Louai’s works include America America: An Anthology of Beat Poetry in Arabic published by Arwiqa for Translation and Studies, an Arabic translation of Michael Rothenberg’s collection of poems entitled Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story published by Arwiqa for Translation and Studies. He also contributed with Arabic translations to Seven Countries: An Anthology Against Trump’s Ban published by Arroyo Seco Press. His first collection of poems is called Mrs. Jones Will Now Know: Poems of a Desperate Rebel which was praised by Anne Waldman, Thurston Moore and Michael Rothenberg. His second collection of poems, Rotten Wounds Embalmed with Tar, was a finalist for the 2020 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry
This Monday we’re doing our second online SpokenWord, taking place nowhere and everywhere thanks to a Zoom room provided by the University of the 3rd Horizon.
Poet/prophet, Louise Fazackerley, follows Orwell, bringing her Glass Arc Tour from Wigan to Paris. Fresh from supporting punk legend Dr. John Cooper Clark, with work rooted in word-witchery and the working class, Louise is exploring the synergy between poetry and movement in a way that makes the ugly beautiful and the mundane fantastical. Winner of BBC Radio 3 ‘New Voices’ and European Slam Finalist, Louise is excited to share her new genre-distorting, darkly humorous dystopian book ‘The Lolitas’ published with Verve Poetry Press. Louise also has two collections with spoken word label ‘Nymphs & Thugs.’ As seen on BBC1 and read in The Guardian. 
Chris Burke is an English-Irish writer and journalist whose debut collection of poetry, The Noise of Everything at Once, was published by Happy House Books in 2017. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in magazines including Antiphon, Southword, the French Literary Review, Snakeskin, Paris Lit Up and Prole, and he recently won the second prize in the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition, having also featured on the UK National Poetry Competition longlist.
Cecilia Llompart is the author of The Wingless (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2014), and her book-length poem, Wild Vespers, was a semi-finalist for the Fall 2017 Black Lawrence Press Chapbook Competition as well as a finalist for Verse Journal’s 2016 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. She holds an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and has also been awarded a fellowship from The Dickinson House, named one of two finalists for The Field Office Agency’s 2016 Postcard Prize in poetry, and one of ten winners in Neat Streets Miami’s “Growing Green Bus Stop” Haiku Contest. In addition to appearing widely in journals and anthologies, her work has been translated into three languages. In 2015, she founded the New Wanderers Collective, a multilingual and nomadic poetry initiative, and in 2016 she moved to Paris, where she teaches English Lit. and translates poetry from both French and Spanish.
SpokenWord Paris 