SpokenWord Paris

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.

…

Report by Alberto. Pictures by Stephanie Hoffmann (Check out the Whole Album)FEATURED POET and Writer, Rapper, Lecturer, Boxing Champion of Writers get Violent, Founder Of The Series Unstrung Letters, Midnight Storyteller: Georgina Emerson.

Tom scares the audience: I’m a gargoyle from Manchester. Kirby goes with: Shake The Dust by Anis Mojgani. Jason keeps translating the untranslatable Romanian poet. Pat Cash is single. Good to know. “You can’t blame your one night stand / for being your one night stand / But when you’re very drunk you can.” “David called his mother: Mama, she’s the one.” We don’t know what his mother said. Debra dedicated to Uncle Superman Fly. Kate in Paris, Kate in South Africa. Savannah disappeared, we don’t know where. Special Celebration: Georgina is leaving and to honour one of our most beloved athlete we retire her legendary panties, hanging forever in the Chat Noir/Spoken Word Hall of Fame. Round Two. Sam: Fuckin Human Beings. Ok. Jonathan introducing Obsidivism. Louisa reads her poem “Christmas” featured in the Bastille: “Cats fucking interrupt our mourning.”. Victor’s History of French Popular Music. John Lennon: “French rock is like English wine: it doesn’t exist.” Kia fixing her banjo. Dan song about a thunderstorm in the Alps. Thomas’ outing: I’m celibataire. Verb. Poetry. I poetry reverberate.

Round Three. Strangely is back with his accordeon: History of American Popular Music. Jayne encouraging crazy artists. Kya playing her banjo (Finally Amazing!) Alex The Dreamsailor: sad happy song about S. Francisco oooooh oooooooh! The Ella & Kajsa Scandinavian Accappella Duo singing: “Var Inte Radd For Morkret”. Scandinavian Ambjorn reading Robert Frost and introducing his play reading. Alex Manthei sharing German Poet Monica Rinck’s Pond. To re-read it: Click Here. Helen (from Ireland) the Angry Lutemaker is back! Helen (from France) featuring Georgina for the new french improvised dictionary. Farewell Georgina. Thanks you for two years of Mondays! For all the others see you next Monday.

The Bastille was stormed last night in chaotic and bloody scenes, the King and Queen executed using a cheese grater. Even Alberto, who orchestrated turning hundred-strong Chat Noir crowd into a rabble, did not escape.

Copies of The Bastille are on sale though – for just 10 euros – featuring such writers and poets as were heard last night. All the folowing who read last night are in the magazine: the priapic Pat Cash, the tatooed Kate Noakes, the hermaphroditic James Thompson, Bibi, Emily, the far-and-whee Mandoline, the jazzy-Charlie-Parkering Antonia, the spitting and driven Jason, the bug-bitten Pablo, Helen (who is on the cover of The Bastille) and Mr Fuckoffville himself – Alberto. To read more by them get a copy at the next SpokenWord or email me, David, on db1066 at gmail.com.

But that was only the half of it!

We also had Freejazz dance and poetics from Pearlann, Riva and Anna of The Pillow Project. The second part of Victor’s musical lesson on postwar French chanson. More of Betsy Ma’s forthcoming novel. And much, much more.

Thanks to all who came. See you next week! Report by David. Photos by Stef.