SpokenWord Paris

Nicole Peyrafitte is a performance artist born and raised in the French Pyrenees. She considers herself a Gasco-Rican (1/2 Gascon, 1/2 American) & citizen of Brooklyn. Peyrafitte pursues related multi-cultural and multi-media investigations that integrate her voice, texts, visuals and also cooking. She has two CDs out: The Bi-Continental Chowder /La Garbure Transcontinentale 2006 & Whisk! Don’t Churn! 2009. Visit her website for blog/videos and more: www.nicolepeyrafitte.com.

William Walrond Strangmeyer was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and Brofus, New Jersey, where he went to Rutgers University, starting out as a classics major, changing to musicology and finishing with an abnormal psychology, all of which he declined to follow up or to practice. He has worked in many different fields of endeavor,
including amusement parks, banks, book stores, cinema, door-to-door sales, restaurants, retail sales, taxi driving, telephone sales, warehouses and as a tour guide and was also co-editor of Upstairs at Duroc, a literary review, blowing his chances at working-class hero status. A thirty-four-year resident of Paris, he now earns his living as an English language trainer and translator.
He is the author of several volumes of poetry (all slim), his other principal interests being various forms of boxing, bull fighting and old music. He is Archon of Paris for the Moorish Orthodox Church and a member of various other organizations embracing a few essential beliefs and having
even fewer doctrines. He has two young daughters and is thus in touch with the needs, desires and tendencies of today’s teens and pre-teens.
He has read all over Paris over the years, including every year with the original incarnation of this series. His main influences are science fiction, doo-wop music and a mis-spent youth, along with the usual Eliot, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Poe, Catullus, Larkin, Elroy, Doctor Seuss, Beaudelaire and also Emmylou Harris, Roy Jones Jr., Leonard Cohen, Fedor Emilianenko, Bartok and Roy Orbison.
His motto this year is, “All dust is gold,” but sometimes he forgets.

David Barnes grew up in the Thames Valley in England in the 70s and 80s. He escaped to Manchester University where he successfully ignored any desire to write for 6 years. He started writing poetry as an adult in the mid 90s and started writing short stories a few years before settling in Paris in 2003, where he created and runs The Other Writers’ Group at Shakespeare and Company and SpokenWord, a weekly open mic poetry series. He won Shakespeare
& Company’s Travel in Words prize in 2006 with a short story and has published short stories in 34th Parallel Magazine and Spot Lit Magazine. He has a poem in the current issue of Upstairs at Duroc and edited Strangers in Paris: An Anthology of New Writing inspired by the City of Light, which will be out in the summer. He is also an editor with issue.ZERO magazine
which brought out an issue this winter. He currently divides his time between a Masters in psychotherapy, writing short stories and poetry and a day job teaching English and creative writing so that he has enough money to feed himself and his cat and do everything else.

Alberto writes…

Spoken Word starts early now, cause we are so many and so wild. As happened before, we open with Lady Marie Claire Calmus, an old school performer who sings french songs twice a month at Culture Rapide. Then Jennifer who’s French and performs for the first time in English:

“There ‘s no way to define death!

because when you reaaaaaally think about it

you might loose your own head”

Moe Seager, Emilie, sick of singing love songs, sang a song that called “this is a song about nothing at all”. Adèle for the first time on our stage:

“I have this memory

of the adult and the child

who have the same, wheat-field hair

He..

He..

He..

But I can’t find the verb

Or anything in between

There’s just the father and the child

with the same, wheat-field hair.”

Trelys Duprè, Claire about Belleville:

“Art boils and is thrown into the gutter, oil spills rainbows around the island of a dropped glove”

And Erica, attention please: her first album True Love and Water is out now!

http://ericabuettner.bandcamp.com/

Part II:

Sue, Condor, Tramaine, Roy,

Alberto reminded the night in which publishers came in Culture Rapide…

http://tightropebooks.com/strangers-in-paris-new-writing-inspired-by-the-city-of-light/

The Maxx, The Newens: Ashley, Al and Maxim,

Beth, then Tyler

closing with:

“the innocent privilege in seeing you as midnight does,

your tiptoed march along the hard wood lingering

like the suspension of breath upon glass.”

Part III

Zach, Fanny, Georgina: how sms become a spoken word masterpiece,

Amy, Helen, Bubu, Hamed, Suzanne, Brittany, Guillermo,

Natasha explaining why russians killed Poland’s President and other little things.

Rufo, Moe, The Maxx. Goodnight.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20110303-the-new-wave-of-parisian-literature

I’ve been working with Kathleen Spivack as my writing coach for 5 years. She’s great, and won the Allen Ginsberg Memorial Poetry Prize last year. Blurb below from Village Voice bookshop’s website.

KATHLEEN SPIVACK
A History of Yearning
Tuesday, March 15th at 7pm

by Alberto

Crowded Spoken Word, we are starting earlier but we always finish at Midnight!

Igor Limansky, first time on our stage, opens it:

“We are drunk and naked, dancing

by the light of non-decision

in shoes made perfect by the moon.”

Marie Claire Calmus, Trelys Duprè,

J.D. reading about the Saintsimonians for the last time before going back to the coldest Alaska we can imagine, Moe Seager, Arash, Troy, Clain, Alberto introducing the first fight of “Writers Get Violent”:

Chris The Vicious Newens VS the No Meat Eater Peter Cow Killer Brown,

who read a remix of the notorious Cassius Clay’s poem “I’m The Greatest”:

Yes, I’m the man this poem is about, I’ll be Champ of the world,

there isn’t a doubt.

Here I predict Mr. Newens dismemberment

I’ll hit him so hard, he’ll wonder where Mars and April went.

If you want to see some poetry in motion, three days later:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXDzK2fAWvw

Britney closed part I with

“you were satisfying like peanutbutter

sweet like agave limbs unfurling into wafts of coriander

(manna my dear)”.

Part II

Started with Susie, followed by Kyle. If you want to taste his songwriting:

http://www.myspace.com/kyleavallone

Robert Cole, Chris Newen’s short play featuring Jess Sleazy Martinez Granatt and Kevin the Cow, Betty without the Box. Mimi kicked asses.

She’s her speciality indeed:

http://kickingitwithmimi.blogspot.com/2011/02/glico-man.html

If you want to laugh more and more info, go on her facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/mimiredlips

Amy, and then the Press Conference for thursday’s second fight: Kirsten Johnny Bastard Foster VS Beth Poisonous Peacock Jervis. Troy with his famous love poem: “Sweet Tender Buttfinger”, Moe , Julian craving for “Money”, Rufo Quintavalle, Arash. Final French Poetry Lessons by Bastien, by Bubu. It’s midnight. Poetry homeless go home. Come back next monday.

In Belleville, at Culture Rapide.

Brian reached for fresher air. “We are the monkeys that sharpened our sticks and played with fire.” Troy was his lusty, cop-feeling self. Claine spoke of vanished objects, like your hand holding my hip. Bernard conjured up a ginkgo biloba and snow in St Ouen. Guillermo was howling at hipsters. Ryan van Winkle is a bitter cranberry, turning like a lawyer against you. OCA manifested themselves. For Alberto, the Audience Isn’t Right. Don’t let them change you! Ben, Bjorn, Brian and company demonstrated subtextual healing. Julianne brought all the words she never wrote, with small and careless hands. Suzanne: So many Mondays stacked together and torn in half.

Get there early tonight if you want a seat! Poetry is getting popular, again.

Cheers,

David

A message from Alberto…

Welcome to Writers Get Violent! Welcome to the first fight club for bohemians. Struggling writers of Paris, sick of mutual readings, snobby criticism, sappy feedbacks in writing workshops, decide to fight. A literary event our good old granpa Hemingway would have liked. Come down and hear some REAL beat poetry.

Here is the program:

First of all the weight. As tradition wants, every boxer will be weighted (almost naked). A Press Conference. A brief reading, a violent critic by the opponent, and when the words doesn’t matter anymore, the fight. First time ever on a ring:

Chris Newens (ENG) vs Peter Brown (AUS)

Jess Granatt (ENG) vs Georgina Emerson (USA)

Kirsten Forster (ENG) vs Beth Peacock Jervis (CAN)

Host: Alberto Rigettini Referee: Troy Yorke

The jury will be composed by literary authorities of the underground Parisian Scene.

Three Rounds. Violence. National Anthems. Illegal bettings.

Thursday March 3rd 9pm

At: Chat Noir, 76 Rue Jean Pierre Timbaud 75011 Paris. Metro: Parmentier, Couronnes Suggested betting 5 Euro.

Monday February 28 Press Conference at Spoken Word.