SpokenWord Paris

Open Secret! Your own intimate open mic community, Wednesdays @ Le Bistrot des Artistes, 6 rue des Anglais – Métro Maubert-Mutualité (line 10) or Saint-Michel (line 4).
We have two very special guest poets, visiting us from a long ways away, Nico Vassilakis & Crystal Curry. (Bio’s below). Because of the extent to which they deconstruct & reinvent language, “Language” shall be our theme.

Bio’s:
Nico Vassilakis wrestles letters to free them of their word scrum then captures them in mid emancipated dalliance before they return to formulate into the next word. Many of his results can be found online and on his website, Staring Poetics – http://spokenwordparis.us8.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8f291f07cdd0dd501ebc6bc4d&id=fca025a7c1&e=d7e6d8af06. Nico’s visual work has been exhibited in vispo shows around the world. His latest book, Alphabet Noir (c_L books), is a collection of texts regarding visual poetry. A book, In The Breast Pocket Of A Fine Overcast Day, is forthcoming from Deadly Chaps Press. Nico was vispo editor for COLDFRONT magazine. Nico, along with Crag Hill, also co-edited The Last Vispo Anthology (Fantagraphics 2012). He lives in New York City with his wife and children.

Crystal Curry is the author of But I Have Realized It, winner of the Gatewood Prize, selected by Dorothea Lasky (Switchback Books, 2016), Our Chrome Arms of Gymnasium (Slope Editions, 2010) and the chapbook Logotherapy Pant (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008). Her poems, reviews and poetry articles have appeared widely in publications including The Volta, Coldfront, Octopus, Denver Quarterly, Action Yes and others. She lives in Van Cortlandt Village, BX, NYC with her husband, poet/artist Nico Vassilakis, their children and a little Boston terrier named Timaxzienie.

Fred Eyangoh was born in Cameroon. 19 years later, in 2010, after he received a bachelor in management, he moved to France and joined the business school HEC Paris. While on campus, he joined the school’s Glee Club, the improv group and was an actor/singer in the school’s musical. A few months after he obtained his Master’s degree, he started stand-up comedy at the Chat Noir. In 2015, he started with two other comics the open mic night called the Unfiltered Comedy Hour, and today he hosts the Comedy Square, which is the showcase English-speaking comedy show at the Paname Comedy Club, every Tuesday at 9:15pm

Paris meets Brussels

Link to Brussels event

An international expedition of poets has been organised to strengthen links with poets in the North in these dark political times… A poet exchange, you might say. The first phase involves 5 of us from SpokenWord Paris travelling to SpeakEasy: Spoken Word Brussels for various diverse events between Thursday 4th May and Sunday 7th.

Later, Brussels poets will travel south to Paris to bring us their news from the North.

The poets we are sending across the border are:

Camille Adnot (France) – Camille’s poems often deal with perception confusions, shapeshifting, and the female body and psyche. She also loves to revisit old myths and to give them a contemporary take.

David Barnes (UK) – a poet whose subjects range from daily life to outer space, alternately poignant and funny, David founded SpokenWord Paris after reading way too much poetry by John Cooper Clarke, Rimbaud, Ginsberg…

Thibaut Narme (France) – France’s first Melunian poet, Thibaut blends the personal with dark social observation. Check out his e-book ”Rap in my poetry – ‘cos white poets are boring”

Alberto Rigettini (Italy) – poet, playwright, screenwriter, freak-show barker, Alberto is the Italian host of  SpokenWord Paris and a Poetry Brothel pimp. Awarded a prize in 2011 for The Lorca in Translation Competition, the Troubadour International Poetry Prize.

Bruce Sherfield (USA) – singer, poet, drmatic monologuist… Bruce’s work is a kaleidoscopic, high energy collision mixing poetry and flash fiction. Also, he is writing a novel set in Brussels.

Camille Adnot

Thibaut Narme

Bruce Sherfield

Alberto Rigettini

David Barnes

Mark Norman Harris is a 29 year old Canadian artist living in Paris.  His work is based in performance, music and writing although he is an avid painter.   He studied religion and semiotics at the University of Toronto. Prior to living in Paris he was in Nepal where he wrote for the Kathmandu Post, and created an artist exchange program that brought artists to rural villages  for workshops and performances.   Mark is currently recording an album with Quvib records in Paris, and is the organizer of the Cabaret Voltaire. His play The Penal Clause, a « hiphopera » satire on freemasonry, was featured and the conceptual theatre festival Fourplay in April of this year.  Most of his work is explores themes of religion, absurdity, politics, and alienation.

Open Secret! Your own personal community open mic, Wednesdays @ Le Bistrot des Artistes, 6 rue des Anglais, in the Latin Quarter. Métro Maubert-Mutualité (line 10) or Saint-Michel (line 4). 8pm, nightlong sign-up begins, & at 9 the show.

Tonight, two special things – some Germanophones (like brilliant Swiss writer Cordula Frei) & Anglophones shall read from the letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, as well as his poetry, in German & English. The theme is of course the title of his famous colllection, “Letters to a Young Poet.”

Also, catch John Hoggett again (Monday’s SpokenWord feature)!
John Hoggett is a Pinko Commie Queer, dedicated homosexualist, environmentalist and wordsmith. He performs regularly at Lets Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs in Ku Bar, Soho, London and has performed at most Climate Camps…

John Hoggett is a Pinko Commie Queer, dedicated homosexualist, environmentalist and wordsmith. He performs regularly at Lets Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs in Ku Bar, Soho, London and has performed at most Climate Camps.

Open Secret! Your own personal community open mic, Wednesdays @ Le Bistrot des Artistes, 6 rue des Anglais, in the Latin Quarter. Métro Maubert-Mutualité (line 10) or Saint-Michel (line 4). 8pm, nightlong sign-up starts, & at 9 the show! Our theme this evening is inspired by the gift our featured poet, Thomas Spencer, has for using his genius for craft, then breaking away from it, & finding “Freedom within form.” You’ll just have to hear him, before he shuffles off to India…

Thomas Spencer is an Australian born environmentalist and part time writer. He writes in a range of styles, from serious poems in traditional forms, to ridiculous children’s poetry, to risqué satire. He’s been a regular at different Paris-based open mic nights and has published in different magazines. He will be moving to Mumbai in April 2017, where he will spread the Paris open mic scene far and wide.

See you at the Bistrot 2nite, for some high verse, high & low humour, & general camaraderie! 🙂

Published books, prizewinners, guest poets ….here is a March photo selection!

Photography by Sabine Dundure