SpokenWord Paris

Alison Grace Koehler is a poet who uses broken shards and text to create stained glass windows and performances in diverse spaces. Her first book ‘Stained Glass Poetry’ bridges these two worlds, as does her spoken word album ‘Stained Glass Arrangements,’ both produced by Paris Heretics. Alison has performed in international festivals including the Edinburgh Arts Festival, the Bloomsday Festival, Upwentelling, and Iruzzioni. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and art centers including la Cité Internationale des Arts, Vilniaus Dailės Academija, Espace Christiane Peugeot, and Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre. She has just released her second book and spoken word album ‘Secret Space,’ in collaboration with Benjamin Dwyer, produced by Farpoint Recordings, and released at the James Joyce Center, Dublin in June 2024.  Born in Chicago, Alison currently lives and works in Paris, France.

Andrej Kapor (b. Sarajevo, 1989) is an artist, writer, and creative producer working across disciplines. As an author, Andrej’s work is driven by rebellion, sensuality and the divine, underpinned by dark humour and informed by his multicultural background. As a curator, publisher and broadcaster, he is focused on community-building and the platforming of marginalized voices as a means for affecting social and cultural change. He is currently based in Utrecht, Netherlands. His work has been published, exhibited, and toured internationally.

Genna Rivieccio is the editor-in-chief of The Opiate, a literary quarterly specializing in fiction and poetry. She is also the author of Corona(tion) Year, Vols. 1 and 2 (2021) and Lindsay Lohan Stole My Life: A Tate Carmichael Novel (2023). Her work, in fiction and essay form, has appeared in/on From Nowhere to Somewhere: The End of the American Dream, Wrongdoing magazine, Sensitive Skin magazine, PopMatters and, most frequently, Culled Culture.

Jo Morrigan Black is a Paris-born writer and visual artist. Their poetry has been featured in journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, The Ethel Zine and Abridged. Jo has worked with indigenous leaders in Colombia, left stray feathers in Berlin and now stalks the streets of Dublin as a vampire. Their drag poetry show Carpet Muncher, inspired by the Mothman,premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2024, blending Spoken Word, physical theatre and surrealist costuming in order to celebrate the queer and the unknowable in each of us.

Bruce Edward Sherfield is (in my own words) a brilliant writer, director, actor, voice-over artist, painter, singer and good guy. He just released his first blues album under his alias: Happyalone, called Saigon Señorita Blues. He also heads AWOL WRITERS workshop in this very room Sundays at 17h15, where his team professionally guides, instructs and inspires. He identifies himself as an Unidentified Flying Artist. We are honored and very pleased to invite Bruce to perform work from his latest collection: the hand/shakes of the hit/man: magnesium&calligraphy

Helen Cusack O’Keeffe is a writer and social worker based in Paris for many foggy years. Publications can be found in the Bastille, Tightrope Press (Canada), Stoneskin Press (London), and Le Farming Times. Plays include Holey Tuscany, an absurdist maritime tragedy,  Napoleon, Femme, Rhinocéros, a bilingual Surrealist extravaganza, and The Terrible Mystery of Ophelia Dupont-Cassé co-authored with poetic genius Vincent Chabany.  She has been on the Paris Lit Up magazine editing team since issue #1. Her costume-maker alter ego, PomPom de la Tour Awfful, dresses actors and models for her own events and for ones hosted by her unfortunate victims.

Born in 1952 in Brockton, Massachusetts, Richard Krawiec became known in 1986 with Dandy ( Time Sharing in English), which was critically acclaimed. In 1996, he wrote a second novel, Faith in What? and has since devoted himself to poetry, theater, his columns in various East Coast magazines and teaching. His third novel Vulnérables, was published in France by Tusitala in 2017, and was a great critical success. Also in France, the rights to  Dandy  were purchased for the cinema. Paria , his third novel to be published in France, was released in January 2020. This was followed by Les Paralyses in 2022 and  Croire en quoi ? in September 2024, which saw Richard invited back to France for a tour. Richard Krawiec is also an editor in the Jacar Press collective ( www.jacarpress.com ), a community active poetry publishing house that defends local social initiatives. He was one of the first to give writing classes and lead workshops in homeless shelters, prisons or deprived cities, guided by the concern, as in his novels, to give a voice to those who no longer have one. His own poetry has been published in dozens of journals internationally. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and elsewhere.– Live performance in English of Croire en Quoi?
with bassist/percussionist Vattel Cherry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnkkTv-_1yA&t=2s Check out my bilingual(French and English) website! http://rkwriter.com/

Ali Sudani is a poet and activist based in Paris. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq, where he worked as a reporter, videographer, and humanitarian aid worker before arriving in France as a refugee in 2019. His work explores themes of war, exile, and migration, blurring the boundaries between personal and collective narratives. Ali started writing poetry in Arabic at the age of eleven. In 2009, he won the Ministry of Education’s Regional Award for Theatre, and in 2011, he received the Ministry’s Young Talent Prize for poetry. His work has been published in several magazines and newspapers in Iraq, and he currently writes in Arabic, English, and French. He holds a BA in Public Policy and a Master’s in International Relations and Middle-Eastern Studies. You can find him online on Instagram @sudani.0.

E.K. Bartlett is a Paris-based writer, editor, and translator. The recipient of the Gigantic Sequins Poetry Award of 2021 judged by Arisa White, and nominated for Best of the Net in fall 2022, their work has been published or is forthcoming in literary magazines both in print and online, including in Asymptote, Jet Fuel Review, Rust + Moth, Pulp Poets Press, Necessary Fiction, Fifth Wheel and Osmosis. They were previously the poetry editor for Paris Lit Up and now run a radio show on poetry in translation on World Radio Paris. You can follow them at Ell_TheRewriter. 

Spoken Word Paris returns to the Chat Noir Monday 2nd September! Sign up 8pm in the bar, show begins downstairs 8.45pm.

Theme: SKINT

Au Chat Noir, 76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011, métro Parmentier (line 3) or Couronnes (line 2)