Jeffrey Greene has published five collections of poetry, most recently Beyond Our Means (2016).  He is the author of the memoir French Spirits and three personalized nature books.  A fourth nature book, Seven Music Forests, is under contract. 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, Kenyon Review, and the anthologies Strangers in Paris, Intimacy, and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to Flash Sequence. He is professor at the American University of Paris and mentors for the Pan-European MFA Program.

Thou cream faced loon!

You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!

There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune!

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday (and deathday) once again so at SpokenWord we’re celebrating with a theme of:

Insults, Shakespearean and otherwise 

It’s 11 years and more since I started this open mic night in Paris and for once it’s come round on the day that also happens to be my birthday. So for as far as I can remember the first time, I’m gonna take the stage for the featured poet spot myself instead of just having 5 minutes. And I’ll read some things new and most likely some old favourites.

It’s brought me so much poetry and joy and friends and drunken nights and fun and even the occasional lover, this SpokenWord Paris night. Long may it continue and many thanks to all of you who’ve sailed with me on these Monday nights and whose company has made Paris so much of what it has been for me. Without you, this would not have become home, where the wandering stopped and poetry grew and flourished.

What? Oh, yes, I’ll be 47.

And not cycling home drunk (and falling off my bike twice) like my 40th, celebrated at SpokenWord back in the day when we did it at the Culture Rapide.

Drop in, come down, and raise a glass or share an insult, Shakespearean or otherwise!

Cheers all,

David Barnes

Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows!

Thou art as loathsome as a toad! I do desire we may be better strangers! Your virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese.

Moe Seager has published 5 books of poetry and will issue his next collection with Onslaught press, Oxford, U.K. Seager also leads jazz ensembles in Paris and New York and other cities as a singing jazz poet. He is the host of the Paris poetry series Angora Poets. His work has been published by le Ministère de la Culture France. His work has been translated into French and Arabic by Cairo press, Egypt. Seager won a Golden Quill award for investigative journalism and a Human Rights award from the University of Pittsburgh

Iris Colomb is an artist, poet, curator, and translator based in London. Throughout her practice she explores different relationships between form and content, applying a design approach to poetic projects. She has given individual, collaborative and interactive performances in both France and the UK (including the Royal Court Theater, the Arnolfini, and Tate Modern). Her poems have been published in Zarf, Pocket Litter and Datableed; and her co-translation, with Elliot Koubis, of Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘The Stories and Adventures of the Baron d’Ormesan’, was published by Ampersand in 2017.
Iris has been resident artist and poet at the Centre For Recent Drawing, she is now the art Editor of Haverthorn magazine, and a member of the interdisciplinary collective ‘No Such Thing’. Her work has been showcased in the collective exhibition ‘We Fiddle While Rome Burns’ (Donetsk 2014), sold at auction in Versailles (2015), and ‘Semechki’ (Семечки), her collaboration with Russian poet Eta Dahlia, has recently been exhibited at the National Poetry Library. She also curates events seeking possibilities beyond the traditional format of poetry readings, each of which acts as a separate live experiment, linking poetry and other art-forms such as film, visual arts, sound, and design.

Bethlehem aka Bett is a community arts organizer from Portland, Oregon. Her and her cosmic sisters started an underground open mic, Deep Underground, in a basement of a special home we call Lost House. DUG has grown to doing open mics with 250 people and shows with over 1200 people.  DUG has catalyzed her love words and the lasting bind they create between people for word is bond. Her work is inspired by everything from the four elements to the moles on peoples faces to the eloquent carving that is the human body. She prefers her pictures written and there for writes pictures. Feel free to check out the community work being done in Portland on instagram as @deepunderground. She’s believes that all you speak lasts forever and that we all meet each other intentional words in this life over and over again.

Tommy Sissons is a 22-year-old award-winning poet and playwright. He is the 2014 Slambassadors national slam champion, runner-up in the 2016 Roundhouse Poetry Slam and a two-time regional Hammer and Tongue slam champion. He has performed in venues across the UK such as the Royal Albert Hall, the Roundhouse Theatre and the Birmingham Reparatory Theatre, in addition to festivals such as Latitude, Bestival, Camp Bestival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Boomtown. He is also the narrator of Channel 4’s award-winning TV series ‘Four to the Floor’. Other clients of his include BBC Radio 1, Red Bull, VICE Magazine, the Imperial War Museum, the National Trust and the Guardian. His poetry has been studied by creative writing and literature students at the University of Trier in Germany and in addition to this, he has taught spoken word at the V&A Museum and a variety of educational institutes across the country. His debut poetry collection ‘Goodnight Son’ was published by Bx3/Burning Eye Books in June 2016 and his debut album ‘We Were All Mud and Halos’ was released via QM Records in January 2018.

Rob Reeves is a poet and musician who splits his time between Northamptonshire and Leicester. In October 2016, he was commissioned by BBC Local to write a poem for National Poetry Day on a subject connected to Northamptonshire. Focusing on the local shoe industry, Rob wrote ‘To a Shoe’, the resulting video of which has had over 36,000 views on Facebook. Rob started writing poetry in 2012 when he was taking his MA in Modern Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, where he is now currently taking his PhD in Creative Writing. Rob writes about the important things in life – relationships, drinking, shoes – as well as anything else that takes his fancy. His PhD thesis is a creative work on themes of isolation in the modern world. He tends not to perform these poems though as people are generally out for a good night and he doesn’t want to ruin it.  In 2013, he moved to Paris where he first began performing poetry at SpokenWord Paris. After returning to the UK, he set up his own spoken word and poetry night, Run Your Tongue, which has since seen Attila the Stockbroker, Jonah Matranga, Ash Dickinson, Mark Grist and Jess Green all come through its doors as well as providing a platform for local poets, comedians and musicians. What seems a lifetime ago now, he – along with his band – toured with Napalm Death and Megadeth, played at Reading and Leeds festivals and supported Slayer at Wembley Arena. His music has somewhat mellowed out since then, mainly because it’s just him now and he can’t make as much noise on his own.  His first collection of poetry, Some Poems, is now available through 3P Publishing, and an EP of songs entitled Some Songs will be released in March 2018.