SpokenWord Paris

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.

There were gasps and groans from the audience as Shane recounted cocoons being laid in his pubic hair. Helen read from her tale of an attempted poisoning. David Fishel ate near 50 pancakes to win a bet for his grandad. At first Lucy Hopkins was afraid, she was petrified. Jessamyn started smoking again; everythign looks like carnage in this country. I can’t sleep without your warmth.
Emily’s eyes roared with light. Alberto was investigated for child porn and won his case when accused of horse fucking. (Wtf! Where does this stuff come from? Sometimes I read over these notes and it’s like seeing icebergs loom out of the mist of my beery amnesia and settle back into reality.) Jason translated violence from Naples.

Round 2:
Lucy Gellman was there “…and someone to bake it with.” Moe was stealing back his life. Ben thought of others, a candle in the darkness. Lucile was left standing godless. Edward saw the rain full of ghosts. Constanza    read e.e.cummings’
THERE ARE SO MANY TICTOC
By e. e. cummings

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people 
what toctic time it is for 
tictic instance five toc minutes toc 
past six tic 

Spring is not regulated and does 
not get out of order nor do 
its hands a little jerking move 
over numbers slowly 

we do not 
wind it up it has no weights 
springs wheels inside of 
its slender self no indeed dear 
nothing of the kind. 

(So,when kiss Spring comes 
we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss 
lips because tic clocks toc don’t make 
a toctic difference 
to kisskiss you and to 
kiss me)

And then it was almost over. Caroline filled the empty space with flowers. And Evan brought us news from the internet wars – Porn vs Cats – which you can listen to here 

Next SpokenWord tonight, and every Monday, au Chat Noir.
Cheers,
David

                                         Pansy: we splayed kiss marks all over the room.

Jessanyn: perhaps you thought no harm in letting her pretend. Louisa’s Christmas: Cats fucking interrupt our morning. Emily’s sex positions. Alberto’s May 2: Obama vs Osama. Griffin: “I am every gay-child who’s been told you better off dead.”

                                         Melissa playing the piano during the break.

 

Shane the nature poem of Saint Hook (or another Saint?), Fatima’s tick tock 52 weeks in a year

is my life measured by a laughter from ear to ear? Gina Bonati’s song: Don’t be so merciful, Don’t be too kind, I’m so used to this. Gabriel: What do you have to say now Prometheus? Tino’s singing it’s not about my monkey it’s about me and my pussy. Bruce’s exact change on the bus driver’s mind. Lucille introducing Scarecrow Collective number 3. Buy it at Spoken Word for Euro 1.50. Alex’s Baudelaire: Les gents se figurent l’ivresse comment un pays prodigieux. Ferdia and Shane and the new superhero: Man-man, half man, half man. Finally Beatrice brought flowers for David Barnes.

                                                 

                                          David Barnum looking into the future.

                                                       Margaux’s human Sculpture. 

 Shaping the Poem. From Completion to Publication. “How do we shape a poem so that it shimmers with meaning?.” We’ll discuss how to make our work the best it can be, with attention to communication and publication. Kathleen’s clients write their heads off, publish widely in all genres and win major prizes and top awards. You will too!   http://pariswritersworkshop.org

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bio, Kathleen Spivack

Kathleen Spivack’s memoir With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Plath, Sexton, Bishop, Rich, Kunitz will be published in 2012 by University Press of New England. A student and friend of poet Robert Lowell, Kathleen Spivack has written about the poets of his time, notably Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and others who took her under their wing, with a focus on how they approached their work.

She is the author of seven previous books of prose and poetry (Doubleday, Graywolf, etc), has published in over 300 magazines and anthologies,  and received numerous awards. Named “Best Writing Coach” by the NWU, Kathleen teaches in Paris and Boston.