SpokenWord Paris

by David. Photos by Stef, full album here. And hey, if you want to submit to our magazine check out The Bastille.

Gabriel (photo with miner’s lamp) had his hands on various thighs; fixed at this point with a curled lip, while an old man tugged at his laughter lines. J.D., about to go back to the USA for family & health reasons, sang ‘Are you gong away with not a word of farewell? Will there be not a trace left behind?’ Charles recited Shel Silverstein’s Man Who Got No Sign from memory:

Look out, Momma, he’s headin’ this way,
One eye yella and the other one gray,
Lookin’ for a soul, but he won’t get mine.
He’s the man who got no sign.
Well he blew right in, sat right down
And rolled himself a righteous smoke.
He lit his roach with a lightnin’ bolt,
He took a toke and spoke.
Said he was born in an astrological warp
When the moon refused to shine
On the cusp of nowhere and nevermore.
He’s the man who got no sign.

There wasn’t much Dr Seuss as it turned out, but I did Oh the thinks you can think and Melinda’s I do not want to play this game was inspired by Green Eggs and Ham. David Sirois did impressions of Paris. From impression no.53:

Smoking salesmen on the impatient sidewalk
There are no dogs…
…only traces of them.

Victor’s history of chanson reached 1968: Riots and Reactionary Chanson.

Brief History of the Postwar French Popular Music
Chapter VI : “Crève salope”
La France de 1968 en musique, du réactionnaire rockeur au gauchiste du terroir.
Jacques Dutronc, « Fais pas ci », 1968
Nino Ferrer, « Mao et moa », 1967
Renaud, « Crève salope », 1968 ?
Michel Sardou, « Les Ricains » (Sardou/Magenta), 1967-68
Jean Ferrat, « Ma France », 1968

Round 2 – Amel sang ‘Give a Man a Home.’ Callum did Monty Python’s ‘I like Traffic Lights.’ Kirsten was not waving but drowning c/o Stevie Smith. Sam lost his footing, wrote in the heart. The door was painted shut. Lizzie brought a poem from an old book. Bruce brought hymns sung from the back of greasy menus. Yann Icus read 3 great poems, one I leave you with here and another can be found on his blog.

BUKOWSKI’S BOXCAR

When I was 13 I decided to jump a freight train
after running away from home. I watched
my father shout my name leaning out the front
door, a letter crumpled in his dangling hand.
A letter of adieu, in dramatic cursive, my vengeful
farewell. Exeunt, stomping feet.
Ink bruised my palm from all that sweaty rewriting,
whittling those words to needle point, to cut deep.
I watched the sprinkler on our manicured lawn.
Watched the clockwork of grass growing, the grownups
staring from the porch like sailors on a deck.
Still, the roiling Ocean was too far.
There were no train lines to jump, no roads to Kerouac.
No-one trusts hitchhikers anymore.
Bukowski lied. He never even saw
the inside of a boxcar.
I stole food from my own kitchen, clean socks
from my own bedroom, and slept in the shed
with all the power tools and wood chips.
Father knew the whole time, he told me, years later,
with a gruff chuckle. Thought it was best
I ride this out.

SpokenWord is back Monday Jan 14th with the theme “Teenage Poetry” – bring what you will, your own or by others… the worse the better! Stuff off-theme also welcome. And we have a Featured Reader –

Jan 14th – Alexander Jorgensen
His writings and visual art have appeared in such publications as Van Gogh’s Ear, Diagram, e-ratio, The Nervous Breakdown, Big Bridge, Cricket Online Review, VLAK, Moria, Drunken Boat, Noon: Journal of the Short Poem, Shampoo’s 10th anniversary edition, Sous Rature, Otoliths, The Return of Kral Majales: Prague’s International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010, The Last Vispo Anthology (2012), and others. “Letters to a Younger Poet,” correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket #31.

He was nominated for the Puschcart Prize, 2008.

Cheers all,
David

Report by Alberto. Pictures by Stephanie Hoffman (Whole album here).

Flashback to 2012! For the Last Spoken Word Rumble of The Year, featuring Rachel Rose Reid winner of the UK Young Storyteller of The Year!

I remember 2012, we were so young and naive: Pat Cash, David Barnum, The Tragicoptimist Jason, Christelle, Kate Noakes, Dylan Thomas, Chelsea, Lucy Gelman (Really?) like in the very very good good old times, nonetheless J.D. Ragan was singing “Hard Times come back no more”. Victor was singing Johnny Halliday come back no more, Walter and Thomas like Shakespeare vs Puskin. “This container contains emptyness.” claimed David. Alberto beseeched once again: Please don’t steal a stone from Tuscany (During your Christmas Holiday). Phineas’s Jazz from North Carolina, Vanessa G. (Remember Cigarettes Machines?), Dan singing in the snow, David (which one? The L.A. resident in South Africa). Bruce’s old man abused by the aliens, Sam reading: “Merry Christmas, Pissed Again”. Kia wanted to give this Christmas song as a present for the Family. Spoken Word’s Family please survive the end of the world and come back on January 7 for a new year of loud poetrynezz in tha Bazement!!!

A request – because, as people have said, it is distracting from the poetry to have a lot of camera clicking going on, I am asking you not to use professional style cameras. Steph takes pictures and is very discrete and if you want to use hers for your personal use, just ask her. She posts them on the facebook page. If you want to film your mate on your i-phone as they read or take one or two pictures discretely, feel welcome. But no professional-type cameras clicking away please.

Some thoughts –

SpokenWord Paris is a place to speak our truths, to sing our visions, to glimpse each others’ hidden worlds. Born the bastard son of Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith, Arthur Rimbaud and Dr Seuss, SpokenWord Paris first drew breath in the cellars of The Lizard Lounge in 2006, a dream sprung from my dreaming brain. Since then I’ve nurtured it to become the community it is today. When I arrived in Paris there was simply nothing like it going on. No English open mic nights. So now it’s 6 years old and is the place where people come to speak the words in tongues of fire that lick the ear or in the stumbling naivete we all pass through when we first write poetry. It’s a creative home that opens its doors to all, in the hope that you will cast off the work clothes of your mind and allow yourself to be vulnerable and be moved. And that then in turn you will be moved to speak with your unique voice and will move us all.

SpokenWord Paris is not about ego, or getting published – though our magazine is on sale at the back – or climbing some ladder of spurious success. It is not a rat race for poets. It is a place where we can all be our strange selves and find, for one evening, home.

Cheers all,
David

And now on to the report from 10th Dec!

Pat Cash & Company

Destined to produce dust (Evan)
autumn chides the skin with sudden cold (David)
Pablo Neruda forgets me (Jane)
lost in Victor’s history of chanson, part V

Dear SpokenWord,
if only I could have half as much sex as Pat Cash!
Or Victor!
(Thomas)

Float my words upon the surface like an oil slick (Gabriel)
Paris is for strangers and fractured romantics
while London burns (Pat Cash)

…

les mecs

Here comes the rain again (Amel, Tania)
as love freezes over in the autumn (Colin)
and glossy paper that holds a thousand thumb prints (Anita)

but then –
as grandmother’s eyes drink me in (Lidia)
I am the word that reading eyes read (Lexi)
in the natural spectacle of a boxer falling backwards (Alberto)

Bruce:
No matter how hard you try, books won’t fade to black
Poetry is for the not-so-straight shooters

Lexi

And we heard from Betsy Ma’s novel and about Anita’s bank robber father, who was arrested when she was 3 weeks old, got out of prison when she was 12, died when she was 13.

For Victor’s info about the chanson songs, including youtube clips, check out his post on the facebook page.

…