SpokenWord Paris

Troy Yorke’s poetry seeks beauty in the absurd and surreal, celebrating the darker corners of life, our minds, and our society with irreverence and humor. His work embraces the hidden brilliance in things we normally consider abhorrent and taboo, bringing marginalized voices centre-stage in a variety of experimental forms, language-play and character monologue. His works have been published in various literary magazines in North America and Europe, most recently in Upstairs at Duroc (Paris), and was included in the anthology The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2013 from Australia. He is currently on the editorial team for The Bastille, an Anglophone literary magazine based in Paris and released his first published collection of poetry Hole in My Side: Redemption of the Moon-Hooker in 2014.

Open Secret, that intimate, experimental open mic ***is exceptionally, this evening, being held in the back room of Le Festin Nu (Naked Lunch) in Montmartre*** 10 rue de la Fontaine du But, 75018 Paris. Métro Lamarck-Caulaincourt, line 12. Just cross rue Lamarck, go down the escalier, & it’s just down the hill, on your right.

8:00, nightlong sign-up starts, & at 9, everything shines…poetry, comedy, music, theater, & more. Our theme 2nite is “Inhibitions.” Our featured act is the Improvokers! A comedic performance troupe who invite the audients to join them on stage, lose their inhibitions, & perform with them!

We also have some mind-blowing, no-inhibitions poets visiting, whom you may have seen at Poets Live last night – Kirsty Allison & Ana Seferovic! Powerful performance poetry you won’t want to miss…

See you @ Le Festin Nu 2nite! 🙂

Joel Lewis’s latest book, My Shaolin, is a book-length poem that serves as a psychogeographic investigation of the southernmost portion of the New York Archipelago, Staten Island. According to poet/anthologist Trace Peterson “This commuter poem evokes big questions such as: what do we really take away from an experience of place in language, are we always just visiting and do we ever really get there?” Previous books include:  North River Rundown (2013), Surrender When Leaving Coach (2012), Learning From New Jersey (2007), Vertical’s Currency (1999) and House Rent Boogie (1992), winner of the second (and last) Ted Berrigan Memorial Award. He edited Bluestones and Salt Hay, an anthology of contemporary NJ poets, as well as editing Reality Prime, the selected poems of Walter Lowenfels and On The Level Everyday, the selected talks of Ted Berrigan.  A social worker by day, he has taught creative writing at the Poetry Project, The Writer’s Voice and Rutgers University. And, for better or worse, he initiated the ill-fated New Jersey Poet Laureate position that was such a headache for Amiri Baraka. With his wife, Rutgers University cinema professor Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, he resides in Hoboken

Jennifer K Dick, originally from Iowa, resides in France where she is a Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) of American Literature and Civilization at the Université de Haute Alsace, Mulhouse. She is the author of CIRCUITS (Corrupt, 2013), ENCLOSURES (BlazeVox eBook, 2007), FLUORESCENCE (University of GA Press, 2004), and 6 chapbooks: AFTERLIFE (Angel House Press, Canada, June 24 2017), NO TITLE (Estepa editions, Paris, 2015), CONVERSION (Estepa editions, Paris, 2013) including art by Kate Van Houten, BETWIXT (Corrupt, 2012), Tracery (Dusie, 2012) and Retina/Rétine (Estepa, 2005) including art by Kate Van Houten and translations into French by Rémi Bouthonnier. Her new French collaborative artchapbook “COMME UN n° 10” came out Saturday June 17th 2017. She also co-edited two critical volumes on translation in the Humanities. She is currently at work on a large prose poem project about the CERN and the booklength prose poem collaboration Orphery, likely forthcoming with Corrupt Press books. Jennifer also translates French poets, curates the Ivy Writers reading series in Paris and the Ecrire l’Art mini-residency for French authors at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse. She was a poetry editor for VERSAL out of Amsterdam until this fall when she gave that up to focus on artistic collaborations. She, writes book reviews for various places such as Jacket 2 or Drunken Boat, and a poetics column called Of Tradition and Experiment for Tears in the Fence (UK). From Nov-8 January she was the writer in residence for the Régionale 17 with the Kunsthalle-Mulhouse Centre d’Art Contemporaine and the Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland—and completed a text installation on an architectural space as part of her regional writing project. Starting in January 2017 and running through 2018, Jennifer will be part of and co-directing Expanded Translation a group of poet and critic seminars in the UK and France, focused on various forms of translation, from sound to intersemiotic work. The first of these was held at The Poetry Library, London, Southbank Centre on 9-10 April 2017 and the second will be in Mulhouse on 8-10 November 2017.

Lara is an American stand up comedian and writer living in Paris. She does stand up in venues all over Paris and runs a weekly late night interactive comedy show. When she’s not writing or doing comedy, she can be found on the metro, getting unsolicited advice from strangers

Open Secret! Your own intimate community open mic, Wednesdays @ Le Bistrot des Artistes (6, rue des Anglais, 5è). Inspired words, moving muse-ic, divine comedy, bizarro performance art, dream theater, & pleeez, dance! Métro Maubert-Mutualité (line 10) or Saint-Michel (line 4). At 8pm, nightlong sign-up starts, & at 9 your spectacle!

Our theme this week was inspired by a genius book I read as a child, about the Peanuts Gang, Charlie Brown & Snoopy the Dog & all – the character Linus was found crying, & Charlie asked him why. He yelled out “Because pain hurts!” Brilliant. Doesn’t it?

See ya @ Ze Bistrot! 🙂

(Painting care of Amedeo Modigliani: “Portrait of Maude Abrantes.”)

Postponed: Jude Cowan Montague is an artist. writer and composer with a multi-media practice that crosses disciplines. She is active in new printmaking, installation, poetry, prose fiction, film history, vocal work and performance. She is known for her innovative work with international news agency output. This practice developed while working as an archivist for the Reuters Television Archive. Her first collection For the Messengers (Donut Press 2011) re-formed edits from the Reuters output during 2008 as individual poems. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records 2015) was co-composed with Dutch producer Wim Oudijk and reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed.She is a broadcaster and curates and hosts The News Agents a weekly hybrid news-arts show on Resonance 104.4 FM. Her latest book ‘The Originals’ is out on Hesterglock Press.

Open Secret, 2nite! Your own intimate, experimental open mic, Wednesdays @ Le Bistrot des Artistes (6 rue des Anglais, métro Maubert-Mutualité, line 10, or Saint-Michel, line 4).

At 8, nightlong sign-up launches & @ 9 the show. All tongues welcome! We’ve had 16 langues in the last 2+ years! So, this week we have a brilliant Francophone featured reader/singer, the illustrious Didier Cornevin, who not only sets the poésie of Rimbaud, Baudelaire & Verlaine to music, he recites the French masters with grace & great taste, & eeeeven sings Serge Gainsbourg & Jacques Brel (who is alive & well in Didier’s skillful hands)!

See you ce soir for our art soirée, @ in da oh-so-cool Bistrot des Artistes’ cave! 🙂

NI

NICK CALDERBANK is the founder member of the On Stage/Open Space theatre company and has produced plays by Shakespeare, Pinter, Ayckbourn and Mamet.More recently he has turned his hand to writing and last year wrote and directed the short film ”The Power Within”

DAMIAN CORCORAN has been performing without his parents permission for over Half a century,and  since a typically messy entrance at their house he has continued to fuck things up worse than a couple of cowboy builders.

While we all confess that “There’s nothing like a good poem” Damian freely admits that ” mine are nothing like good poems but one day they’ll be my legacy”.

And when it’s found by my progeny they’ll say why did he  leave us his “leg at sea”.

Absurd though this sounds the rhyme is not the reason nor the time or the season but seize the day strike while the irony is hot And bless the little ones for they know not who they do.

Religion, in  particular the crucifixation, has played a b minor part in Damian‘s Roccoco chamber pot that others call “life” (pissoir in French) and it is through the poem that you shall know him “habeus corpus ic sunt bibendum est” As they say in Rome

But before he goes on a busman’s holiday (don’t tell the busman) and becomes a fulltime retired writer

He is performing deep and of great social import sketches about unreconstructed males who find beers easier to understand than women, even women with beers.

Artists Bio: jamika ajalon A disciple of the creative, I am inter-disciplinary artist who works with different mediums independently, but also in multiple fusions- incorporating written and spoken text, sound/music, and visuals. A nomad, I grew up in america but have lived for years in europe, including England, and France. During travels (including countries in Africa) I have met and collaborated with other artists, academics, who who challenge ‘frontiers’ (external borders as well as internalised) and are planting seeds. A science fiction nerd, I have always looked at ‘space’ as a place to realise and talk about possible futures. My publications and performances have been diverse. They include a series of audio-visual anti-lectures which explore memory, and nomadic subjectivity through a “afrofuturist” lens. As I roam I have had the good fortune to perform, record, tour , publish and exhibit/ screen my work inVienna, London, Berlin, South Africa, Senegal, Kampala, Paris…