SpokenWord Paris

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton in Lowell’s Early Workshop: Fierce Friendships and Raw Rivalries
a presentation from
With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others
by Kathleen Spivack

Thursday, October 10th, 7 pm
Shakespeare & Company
37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005, Paris

The friendships and rivalries amongst the poets in Robert Lowell’s circle in Boston, especially Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, were complex and multi-layered. Respect, help, support, competition, jealousy, and even a suicide pact were some of the aspects. I’ll read from my latest book, With Robert Lowell and His Circle, and add my own insights into what I, as a young writer in Lowell’s workshop, personally observed through my own long-term friendships with the poets involved. After the reading, there will be time for questions and discussion, as well as book signing. Hope to see you there!

More information about the book below…

With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others
by Kathleen Spivack
University Press of New England, 2012

In 1959 Kathleen Spivack won a fellowship to study at Boston University with Robert Lowell. Her fellow students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others. Thus began a relationship with the famous poet and his circle that would last to the end of his life in 1977 and beyond. Spivack presents a lovingly rendered story of her time among some of the most esteemed artists of a generation. Part memoir, part loose collection of anecdotes, artistic considerations, and soulful yet clear-eyed reminiscences of a lost time and place, hers is an intimate portrait of the often suffering Lowell, the great and near great artists he attracted, his teaching methods, his private world, and the significant legacy he left to his students. Through the story of a youthful artist finding her poetic voice among literary giants, Spivack thoughtfully considers how poets work. She looks at friendships, addiction, despair, perseverance and survival, and how social changes altered lives and circumstances. This is a beautifully written portrait of friends who loved and lived words, and made great beauty together.

A touching and deeply revealing look into the lives and thoughts of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, With Robert Lowell and His Circle will appeal to writers, students, and thoughtful literary readers, as well as to scholars.

“This book is absorbing and alive, human and compelling . . . the best memoir yet about Robert Lowell.” – Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California, Riverside

“Spivack’s portrait offers a window on a man, a city, and a method for anyone not lucky enough to have taken part in those times.” – Valerie Duff, The Boston Globe

Me and Alberto are trying to make the sign up process fairer to everyone.
We’re abandoning ”first to arrive gets to sign up first” and
we’re abandoning taking names out of the hat.
Sign up will be from 8pm until start of the 2nd round.
The host will take EVERYBODY’s name and your preference for what round
you’d want.
Then just before the start of the 1st round he’ll draw up a list based
on 2 principles:
1. Fairness.
2. Making a good show.
Fairness means if you didn’t get to read last week, or your leaving
forever tomorrow, we’ll give you priority this week. If you got a crappy
spot last week (audience not drunk yet, everyone had left, you had to go
after Troy…) we’ll try to rectify that this week. Generally most people
prefer round 2 but we can’t put everyone in it everyweek. If there is some
bizarre reason why you have to go on at a particular time, let us know.
Please note fairness is a goal that we will strive for but the host will be
(1) human and (2) possibly drinking, so you will have to settle for the
closest to the ideal of fairness that we can get.
Our other principle, ”Making a good show,” means that the host tries to
mix things up, not have all the long prose pieces together or all the songs,
or all the French stuff. Puts some snappy fast slam stuff after a long
prose piece. That kind of thing.

Just before the 2nd round starts the host will draw up a list for the 2nd
round and also should have a pretty good idea for the 3rd by then too,
possibly even a finalised list. Sign up closes.

If there is no way you can be at the Chat Noir between 8pm and the start of
the 2nd round, (because you have a kid, your job keeps you late, etc) let us
know.

1st and 2nd rounds we’re limited by the heat. We can only get through 8,
sometimes 9 people then we need a break. 3rd round can go longer – till
midnight – if the host feels the energy is there and the audience are not
simply remaining out of politeness. (!!) And it’s not too hot.

We think this is gonna be fairer and make for the best show possible. Let us
know what you think. Will you miss the hat?

Cheers all, David

POETS LIVE opens their 2013/14 reading season
with poets: David Barnes, Bibi Jacob and Fiona Sze-Lorrain

When: Tuesday, September 17
Where: Carr’s Pub,1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris
Métro: Tuileries or Concorde
Drinks upstairs at the bar from 7 p.m. Poetry downstairs at 7.30 sharp, please!

David Barnes is a British psychotherapist, teacher, poet and short-story writer who has lived in Paris since 2003. His prose explores relationships and his poetry ranges from love poetry to humour to polemic. He founded and hosts the hugely popular SpokenWord Paris open mic series – see spokenwordparis.org – and The Other Writers’ Group at Shakespeare and Co. He is the Editor of The Bastille magazine and was the Prose Editor of Strangers in Paris: New Writing Inspired by the City of Light. He won Shakespeare & Company’s short story competition Travel in Words in 2006. He has been published in Upstairs at Duroc, Spot Lit Magazine, 34th Parallel, Retort Magazine and elsewhere.

Bibi Jacob studied literature at King’s College, Cambridge and theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Paris. Having worked as a diamond messenger, busker, storyteller, tutor and theatre performer, she is now settled in the City of Light as a voice actor. Her writing has appeared in issue.ZERO, The Bastille, Paragram, Belleville Park Pages and on the flashfiction.it website. She regularly performs her work and her Poets Live reading marks the launch of her chapbook, Glittery City.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in English, Chinese and French. Born in Singapore, she grew up in a hybrid of cultures and studied in the UK and the US before obtaining her PhD from Paris IV-Sorbonne. Her first collection of poetry, Water the Moon, appeared in 2010 and her latest collection, My Funeral Gondola, came out this spring. In addition to her four books of translation of contemporary Chinese poets and her prose translations of Hai Zi, she has translated Romanian-born French poet Ghérasim Luca and American poet Mark Strand. She is the co-editor of several anthologies, the co-founder of Cerise Press and a contributing editor to Mãnoa. With Gao Xingjian, she co-authored Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian. She currently works as an editor at Vif Éditions, Paris. Also a zheng harpist, she has performed worldwide. Her CD, In One Take, was released in 2010. http://www.fionasze.com