SpokenWord Paris

                  Richard Earls writes and performs poetry and songs on the UK and Paris spoken word circuit on subjects as diverse as love, war, family, death and desperation on the dance floor. A musician and songwriter for four decades, he was involved in the mid-80s UK jazz/pop scene (CBS LP Compilation, Get Wise and Virgin/Paladin release Pull Me UP). Following his conspicuous lack of success as a pop star, he moved to France to bring up his family with his wife, Deby. Years later, a chance encounter with a homeless GI, begging on Market Street, San Francisco provided what the French call a ‘déclic’ which resulted in a flood of poems and songs which would become his Older Wiser Harder collection. Richard is now a regular at venues such as The Poetry Cafe, Talking Rhythm, Rags and Tatters, Paris Lit Up, Spoken Word Paris, Rhyme and Reason, Listen Softly London and 1000 Monkeys. At Spoken Word Paris in January his set will include a reprise of his first epic poem, Mairead Aigneis, 21st Century Warrior Queen, which was received so warmly at Write Up! Speak Up! at the Wells Festival of Literature in October. He will also be performing work from his slim volume of poems, The Bonfire.

I have been writing poems since I was nine years old, starting with this first verse “The moon is so beautiful that, sometimes, we have conversations“. (One might say, I am an) Adept of raw, automatic writing and ever flirting with the immortal flowers of surrealism. The theater was my first experience onstage, slam my first playing field. I participated in several major national slams, whereupon… music very quickly came to claim me. I have been performing on stage since 2007 –whether alone or accompanied by musicians, performers, and acrobats. As I arrived in Paris, I wondered how to survive in a city so violent. Then, I met a girl at one of the slam venues who said this about me:   ”Her response to concrete? words of concrete; her echo to horns? horns that honked back; her portrait of the mist? a gaseous gaze from behind misty glasses. I held back a dam of tears listening…Lurking behind those meanings were other meanings; behind those knives, other knives; by virtue of that field of flowers before us, a whole new field of flowers began sprouting in our hearts.” Monday evenings at the Downtown Café, helped me to better support my new life in France.

YAS Poète performeuse

Addison Bale is an artist from New York. His chapbook, SNAKESKINS, was published by Irrelevant Press in 2017. He has also published poems with Indolent Books Press, Wedgie Magazine in Paris, and the Pomeroy Poets Anthology. Most recently he completed a residency in poetry and art education in Bolivia and will be pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in 2020. Outside of poetry, Addison works as a painter in Brooklyn.

Bill Moran is a performance poet and former medic from Houston, TX.  He is a two-time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, and has an MFA Poetry degree from Louisiana State University. He has toured regularly since 2011, performing and teaching throughout the UK, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the US. His work has been featured on Button Poetry (video), University of Hell Press, Alien Mouth, Pressure Gauge Press, and Phoebe. He currently lives and works in Houston as a teaching artist for Writers in the Schools, and his solo debut book ‘Oh God Get Out Get Out is now available through Write Bloody Publishing.

Daniel Wilner is a degenerate and a gentleman. Known as Uncle Lush he comprises one half of the Brooklyn based rap group Brotherz Grimm and has performed at NYC open mikes like the Nuyorican, Art of Lyrics, and End of the Weak, as well as Paris Lit Up. He is a slang aficionado, ill drunken master of freestyling, and overall pretty nice guy. His new solo project Lush Life will be released in 2020.

Ed Bell isn’t looking for paradise, despite the thorny road that has led him to the here and now. As host of a Paris-based literary association for the last three years, he has encountered hundreds of short, yet lived, experiences. A notable theme throughout has been that of separation, uprooting, expulsion: Odysseus tossed by a hundred Seas, and Penelope besieged by a hundred Suitors. This performance will use the media of elegiac poetry, blues piano, Norwegian dance and  plaintive voice to sing The Lamentable Tragedy of the Happy Exile.  

Jeffrey Greene has published five collections of poetry.  He is the author of the memoir French Spirits and three personalized nature books.  A fourth nature book, Seven Music Forests, is in production. He is also the author of Shades of the Other Shore, a book of mixed genre writing: sketches, prose pieces, and poetry written in collaboration with painter Ralph Petty.  His writing has been supported by the NEA, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and Rinehart Fund, and he was a winner of the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Randall Jarrell Award, and the “Discovery”/ The Nation Award.  His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Ploughshares, Agni, Southwest Review and the anthologies Strangers in Paris, Intimacy, and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to Flash Sequence. He is professor emeritus at the American University of Paris and mentors for the Pan-European MFA Program, with its residency in Barcelona this year.