SpokenWord Paris

SpokenWord is every 2 weeks in July and August
Monday 9th & 23rd July and 6th & 20th August

Report by David. Photos by Marie de Lutz. Summer dates for SpokenWord: Mondays 25th June, 9th and 23rd July, 6th and 20th August.

Jason knew an anxious joy on the threshold with the horde of hopeful dreamers. Another world is possible. Kate apparently died in 1871. Crocodiles can’t roll cigs. The taste of toasted almonds. Amelia’s light freckles lurking. Madeleine, how swiftly you’ll get nowhere. Can we time the perfect breath?

Fucking spiders everywhere!!!!!! Pablo evoked groans of disgust from the room. If I told you the truth with a French accent, would you believe me?

 Sonnet for young American poets (Patrick Kilmartin)

Young poets step up but hone your versed craft,
for words worthy of greats, not late night rough drafts.
These journal entries that feel ways about stuff
but forget about form while spilling their guts.
Such undisciplined art cannot long be sustained
by spectators ignored and un-entertained,
thus unbridled indulgence and strained sentiment
evoke nothing when heard but listener contempt.

Writing must struggle, to be fresh, to be lauded,
not used as excuse for a gap year abroad…
But by all means write, pursue truth unafraid,
just recall what Yeats said on learning your trade.

Some concision, tautness and structure please,
‘cause no-one but you likes poems lacking these.

Caroline talked back in tongues. Thinks about white spaces. Pat and Patrick featured in The Lutemaker, Part 3 aka If you’re feckless, go to the feck shop. Michele set the world on fire. Athar saw ribbons on the trees… pieces of him we sort and tag but never see again. Danielle abridged the Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen. Pat, you are the oh-so-bittersweetness of the lime in my mojito.

Alberto dazzled through my irises. A young senior citizen. What to do with my useless self? Murder brought le coeur qui parle… sounds like an Agatha Christie title! Tous marche à l’inverse… Richard drank the Liffey dry. Evan appeared with a hoard of cats, and pyromaniacs. Chris is saving the world in a 6th floor apartment, asking for a post-postmodernism…

To close – Patrick Kilmartin’s rewrite of Yeats that prefaced his Sonnet for young American poets:

“Bourgeois brat Yanks please learn your trade,
don’t recite that which is not well made.
Scorned be this new wave, a growing malaise
that write raw rambling thoughts yet expect all our praise.
Children of Emerson have you forgotten
the traditions you’re part of, the shadows you trod on?”
 

-W.B. Yeats (excerpt from alternate version of Under Ben Bulben, Part V)

Report by Alberto.

Round I
Patrick Cash, Pierre P-Air Purdy, Anass, Lucy Gelman, Kate Noakes, and our featured poet the Dada Jazz Surrealist Maestro Valery Oisteanu:

From the poem “Doctorine” by P-Air Purdy:
“they can’t see Phd but
come to lick blood from
fresh idea

when the meats gone they nip
at fingers
the hand go in pulsing shards”

Peace, love and taco grease.

Round II
Magda, Patrick, Benjamin, Helen, Pablo about Bisexuality: “Pick a fuckin team!”
Andrea, Caroline and our featured dancer Lore. More Lore? Here.
Well, we didn’t have a tree at the Chat Noir.

Round III
Ewan translating Garcia Lorca. Tino. Hiroko Kouno. Kelly. Patrick. James and Dena. Rollin’ on.
Further reading:
Helen O’Keefe from The Angry Lutemaker:

Bartolommeo – My first night at Grimaldi, the DINA agents gave me the bienvenida. You arrive, blindfolded, then ten, fifteen of them, they beat you in silence.  They broke both my arms, but I was one of the few whose family could afford to pay for them to be re-broken and reset.
He stretches out his arms wide, in the pose of the monolithic christ of Rio de Janeiro.
Bartolommeo – See look how straight my arms are!
Y – Like a hammering hero in an old Soviet monument.  No man with biceps like that could be a capitalist parasite.
Bartolommeo – I wish I could take out my brain, to show you how well it too has mended.  My parents sent me to a bourgeois Freud doctor, was interesting, but I told them I’d do better with my art.   In Grimaldi, I acted in my head, for example, in isolation, I improved all Tony Curtis’s roles.  I would be sitting in ripe shit but really I was laughing on a yacht with Marilyn Monroe. No, I cannot take out my brain, but I can tell you about the roses.   I was in a cell with a window for a while, outside was this old rose garden,  planted from before.  DINA agents took the women and raped them there, even they trained a dog to rape.  The screams of the women and the barks of the raping dog would mix with the smell of roses.  I could not stand to look out at them, their smell was sad to me.

Then Anne said I must try to enjoy roses again, and so now I have my roses made of silk. Look!

See you next Monday!

By David
Photos by Marie De Lutz

Shane, last seen somewhere near the Bois de Vincennes.

Round 1:

Dareka spoke the language of asteroids. He co-hosts the poetry night at the Downtown, 46 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, Mondays – check it out, it’s like a parallel universe in which we’re all French).Benjamin brought us the planet of the flakes. The comedy sketches show he’s in is on this Wednesday at the Petit Theatre du Bonheure, (info here). Melanie: the glowing butter brilliance of the waxing moon. Pablo… drags your body into a bathful of ink. David (me!): heart is slow, heart is quick. Pat Cash was full of demons, dawn, gods… Celine: no bit can keep her tongue quiet. Apparently this was a response to me asking her previously ”What do you do with your tongue when you’re not using it?” Kate: archery and silicon; revealing the past is dangerous. Continue reading →

Report by Alberto

Report by Alberto.