SpokenWord Paris

Matthew Silver is a performance artist from New York City who plays a “village idiot” character, acting as a “clown” and “trickster” in order to parody social norms.  He has been in several viral videos in which he performs his antics.

Host and editor at Paris Lit Up and pianist and mouth harpist for Idiot Waltz, Ed Bell has his ass between two chairs. Sprinkle theatrical ambitions into the mix, and you have a disaster musical waiting to happen. Ferociously juggling elements of melody, perception, rhythm, colouring, depth, nonchalance and the wrongs man hands on to man, the ensemble will resonate in your mind, like the echoes of footfalls in an immemorial past.

Dividing his time between the United States and France, James Berg performs as a poet, musician, and storyteller. He ‘poems’ on a vintage Brother typewriter in museums, galleries, and events as part of the collaborative, Poems While You Wait. His songwriting, also collaborative, has been produced by Americana folk/rock musicians and was included in Old Shoe’s Family, named by WXRT as Chicago’s best album of the year. James teaches college literature and writing courses. He’s finishing an MFA at Northwestern University. His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction are available at Shakespeare and Company and bookshop in Paris and elsewhere.

Ryan Hamilton is a 24 year old poet, father to his son, Zayn, and student in West Virginia who believes in the power of love. His two books “A Real Love Story” (2012) “Let’s Change the World: The Misfit Kid” (2017) are proof of his dedication to writing and his desire to reach out to others that he might make a difference in this world. He has performed at poetry clubs, schools,on television, in malls, hotels, bookstores and book festivals Just five years ago he was selling his poetry in pamphlet-form to random people on the streets.”So, this is really important to me” he says. He hopes you will come join him this Monday at SpokenWord. Says Ryan, ”I can’t believe that now ,I’m actually getting the opportunity.

Born in 1971, Andrew is a Canadian born musician, writer, teacher, and poetic adventurer who has lived in the Paris area since 2003.  Andrew has released a couple of folk music albums in France and continues to be a prolific songwriter, performing in local Parisian cafes and cabarets. Critics have compared his lyrical songs to Leonard Cohen, and in the late 1990’s Cohen was his slum landlord in Montreal, where he performed with Rufus and Martha Wainwright, God Speed You Black emperor, and countless other greats.  Currently, he is turning his book on Leonard Cohen into a podcast. Following in the footsteps of Cohen Andrew is a literary songwriter and has a degree in  literature McGill University.  He has spent the last few years teaching at different Paris Universities, as well as writing and recording songs, poems, essays, and short stories.  His writing can be found on Medium  Twitter and Facebook.  He has also published essays for Elephant journal and poems for Sophia Imaginalis.

Sarah “Sam” Saltiel is a queer nonbinary transmedia artist based in Chicago where she is finishing up a triple major in English, Visual Arts, and Creative Writing. She’s been writing since second grade, when she made her first attempt at writing a book by the title of “Kung Fu Kitty”, about a cheetah with wings that did kung fu. She’s spent the rest of her writing career trying to live up to that high bar, and trying to exercise restraint in not getting a tattoo of every beautiful piece of writing that she encounters. She is currently working on editing a manuscript of a novel, and on editing a tabletop rpg that she designed based on the concepts of anxiety. She believes in making writing as accessible as possible and in breaking down the hierarchy in literature. In both her poetry and prose she experiments with form in efforts to push language to its potential. In her writing, as well as in her art, she examines the body in its relationship to the self and she delves into themes of gender, loneliness, and mental health. Her publications include “A Manual to Understanding Your Breath, Curing Your Anxiety, and Other Faux Sciences” in Duende, “This is How You Lose Him” in Memoryhouse Magazine, “Your Trial” in Sliced Bread Magazine, A Year’s Worth of Oxygen in Récolte Poetry Anthology, and “A Thousand Ways to Die on a Greyhound” (Excerpt) in Blacklight Magazine.

Nina Zivancevic –Poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator and contributing editor to NY ARTS magazine from Paris, Serbian-born Nina Zivancevic has published 12 books of poetry. She has also written three books of short stories, two novels and a book of essays on Milosh Crnjanski (her doctoral thesis) published in Paris, New York and Belgrade. The recipient of three literary awards, a former assistant and secretary to Allen Ginsberg, she has also edited and participated in numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry.
As editor and  correspondent she has contributed to New York Arts Magazine, Modern Painters, American Book Review, East Village Eye, Republique de lettres. She has lectured at Naropa University, New York University, the Harriman Institute and St.John’s University in the U.S., she has taught English language and literature at La Sorbonne ( Paris I and V) and the History of Avant-garde Theatre at Paris 8 University in France and at numerous universities and colleges in Europe.
She has actively worked for theatre and radio: 4 of her plays were performed and emitted in the U.S. and Great Britain.  In New York she had worked with the “Living Theatre” and the members of the “Wooster Group”.  She lives and works in Paris.