SpokenWord Paris

Adeena Karasick is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of ten books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “one long dithyramb of desire, a seven-veiled dance of seduction that celebrates the tangles, convolutions, and ecstacies of unbridled sexuality… demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Most recently is Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera co-created with Grammy award winning composer, Sir Frank London. She teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, 2018 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the 2016 Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking and 2018 winner of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University. She is presently on a European performance tour — with stops in Dublin, Padova, Forli, Menton, London, Paris and Venice at the Biennale.

Anika Love’s irruptive love-and-sorrows are channeled into visual and literary art which expose the unseen. Anika liberates the self from barring constructions of normalcy through her subversion of “proper” formulas. The expressionistic nature of her work is the unleashed burst of the—formerly—repressed voice. Drawing inspiration from the self possessed beauty of Nikki Giovanni—“I cannot be comprehended except by my permission”—Anika’s work is a raw reclamation of the self. Her poems rebel against the confines of social expectation as they unapologetically echo the aches, rages, and wants of the other, the objectified, and the unheard. Anika is currently studying at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan where she is painstakingly creating  against the grain!

Erin Byrne is the author of Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France, editor of Vignettes & Postcards from Paris and Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco, and writer of The Storykeeper  film.  Erin’s travel essays, poetry, fiction and screenplays have won awards including Grand Prize Solas Awards for Travel Story of the Year, the  Foreword Indies Book of the Year, an Accolade Award for film, and the Pinnacle Achievement Award.  She has taught writing at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris, at Book Passage Bookstore, and on Deep Travel trips, and is host of the LitWings event series at Book Passage and in Paris which features writers, photographers, and filmmakers. Erin is Collaborating Curator in Travel Writing and Photography for The Creative Process Exhibition, which was launched at the Sorbonne and travels to the world’s leading universities.  She is on the board of advisors of LitCamp, a juried writers’ conference held annually at Esalen Institute, Big Sur.  Her screenplay, Siesta, is in pre-production in Spain, and she is working on a novel set in the Paris Ritz during the occupation, Illuminations.   www.e-byrne.com.

Poet/collagist STEVE DALACHINSKY was born in Brooklyn in1946. His book “The Final Nite” (Ugly Duckling Presse – 2006) won the PEN Oakland National Book Award. His latest cds are “The Fallout of Dreams” with Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach (Roguart 2014), “ec(H)o-system” with the French art-rock group, the Snobs (Bambalam 2015) and “Pretty in the Morning with the Snobs” (Bisou Records – 2019). He is a 2014 recipient of a Chevalier D’ le Ordre des Artes et Lettres. His recent books include “The Invisible Ray” (Overpass Press – 2016) with artwork by Shalom Neuman, “Frozen Heatwave”, a collaboration with Yuko Otomo (Luna Bissonte Prods 2017) and Black Magic (New Feral Press 2017) and The Chicken Whisperer (Positive Manets – 2018). His newest book “where night and day become one – the french poems” (great weather for MEDIA 2018) received a 2019 IBPA award in poetry.

A double feature this Monday at SpokenWord. As well as the great spoken word poet Bonafide Rojas, we are happy to welcome James Baldwin’s niece and nephew to SpokenWord on 8th April, where they will read from Baldwin’s ‘Little Man, Little Man’, written by Baldwin for Tejan when he was little. A big thanks to Camille Rich of The Link for arranging this!

Here’s some words about the book from Baldwin himself.

Biographies:
Tejan Karefa is a writer, photographer and media artist living and working in Paris since 2008, while making jumps from Washington D.C. He has captured street images in D.C., Paris, New York City, Bahia, Brazil and Southern Morocco. Some of these photos appeared in his debut photo exhibit entitled ‘Frontieres’. Tejan has traversed the Paris HIPHOP and Jazz performance scene as a guest vocalist with Paris-based artists and bands including David Linx, Ben L’Oncle Soul, Panam Panic, JDQ (Julien Daian Quintet) and the Urban Groove Unit. Tejan’s foreword opens the newly re-released ‘Little Man, Little Man’ by James Baldwin, originally published in 1977. He has participated on panel discussions and readings in New York and Paris to give voice to the “book of code” he cherished as a childhood gift from ‘Uncle Jimmy’.

Aisha Karefa-Smart is an author, educator and public speaker. Her childhood home in New York City was a congregation space for African-American writers, artists and musicians. Her uncle, the late James Baldwin, often returned home from the South of France to New York where he hosted all night “jam sessions” with literary greats such as Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Influenced by her exposure to such artistic, and cultural, and political discourse, she chose to study and perform as a member of Dr. Glory Van Scott’s Children’s Theater, The Harlem Theater Company and The Falcons Dance Troupe in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Aisha has presented and facilitated panel discussions examining the work of her late uncle and his re-emergence into the nation’s political and racial discourse.

Thanks to The Red Wheelbarrow bookshop who are bringing copies of ‘Little Man, Little Man’ to sell at the event.

Bonafide Rojas is the author of four collections of poetry: Notes On The Return To The Island (2017), Renovatio (2014), When The City Sleeps (2012) & Pelo Bueno (2004). He’s appeared on Def Poetry Jam & has been published in numerous anthologies & journals. He’s in the band The Mona Passage & has performed at: Lincoln Center, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Bowery Ballroom, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Rotterdam Arts Center, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Latinale Berlin, Festival Kerouac Vigo & Festival De La Palabra. He currently lives in New York City.

Robert Isaf is an award-winning poet and journalist from Atlanta. He has performed across Europe and the United States, and has recently relocated to East Germany, where he is working with the medieval Aramaic poetry of Gregory Barhebraeus and on a collection of essays concerning identity and memory off the beaten path. This is his first time performing in Paris.

SpokenWord theme: WISDOM

Cheers all,
David Barnes

Dylan Harris, https://dylanharris.org/, is Luxembourgish. He was born in blighty before Sputnik first flew. His recent poetry collection is big town blues (published by the UK’s Knives Forks and Spoons Press), which unites Dublin & Paris in one book. His profession involves swearing at computers

Rufo Quintavalle was born in London in 1978, studied at Oxford and the University of Iowa and has lived in Paris for the last fifteen years.  He is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which, hhereenow, is published by corrupt press in Luxembourg.  A new and selected poems will be published by Ravenna Press in Washington State later this year.  He has taught creative writing at NYU Paris and for many years ran the reading series, Poets Live.  He is also an environmentalist and is involved in a large scale reforestation project in the Brazilian Amazon.  Poems are on YouTube (Rufo Q) or Facebook (@rufoparis).  Trees are here: http://www.art2030.org/projects/planet-art