SpokenWord Paris

Michele’s poetry is chock full of secrets. Why does the plastic belly dancer suffer when she dies? I am confident that I will never know. Theo Edmonds’ pockets were stuffed, not with secrets, but silly damn questions from the Appalachian mountains. Géno’s tramp’s rêve, ce n’était pas Las Vegas, c’était retourner dans son coin pourri. Kate Fussner from Philadelphia was the featured reader, with her loosely-linked true stories of her own and her family’s secrets. The people in these stories don’t know that these exist! Or that she was reading them to a crowded bar full of strangers in Paris. She certainly proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can’t go into a good piece of theatre and come out the same.
She also secretly fell off a boat.
Antonia dances without her shoes. Sees her own eye peering through the keyhole… Lost, on the wrong side of the mirror. John Abrahams wanders there no more. His song his only wealth.
Beth, aka Miss Peacock, saw dead birds on the motorway; burst the blisters; sifts the trees. Check out more of her stuff on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCI8B-wN68
Marty’s charisma is his secret. Violated umbrellas swallow him whole, like South American jungle serpents. Alexa, on the other hand, has a free range heart (like the eggs?) but the kissing is missing.
Stefanos saw an accident the other day. Yara almost ran over an angel, so maybe that was it. Then again, Bruce saw what happened in Room 444 – site of the suicide, or alleged accident, of Sticky Bottoms the clarinet player.
Lauren Moore had a song about a boy who’s not her boyfriend. Shhhhhhh! Our lips are sealed.
Pauline opened a seasonal bottle of autumnal Baudelaire. Je n’ai plus de chagrin. L’absurde conquête de l’amour!
Sophie scattered ashes. Mr Dave pitted the haiku form against politics. Adam Will walked with no direction into the fog. To know is to forget.
Paulina thinks about death a lot. Helena masticates. Teacher’s despair numbs the dumb.
gNina, pour lui, je m’en vol. Ben’s is the garden that’s well hid. Michele ate crystal cornflakes. And finally Bruce launched into another story: It was 1969 and the colonel wore a dress… Nice opening line!

More secrets will be hinted at next time no doubt.

Cheers,
David

Photos: Julien, Helen, the Public.

SpokenWord crowded night and the theme was “Space”.
Sarah stole a kiss in a crowded disco, Gèno in francais: “Je vous ecris d’un autre planete”, Marty started with: I’d heard about this thing: Smoke chuffing away like liberty. Blocks none of the blank panes. Claudia was amazing, they told me, but I was outside adding other poets on the list, Michele read a poem about the first time he had sex in the vineyard, I don’t remember if alone or not, David for the first time was free to enjoy the night as a full time poet and came up with two cosmopoems and an outcast star. The featured poet of the night was Antonia Klimenko, slam champion from San Francisco, and you can watch down here an excerpt about her stunning performance. John, who created a very interactive piece with the audience playing with the word space, followed by Bruce, just arrived from the World Cup of Petanque, with a poem-song that has a refrain like: “Your helmet, gentleman, your helmet”, Nancy said that all her poems are about space, and this one was about time and space: Heart is the clock of creation./ Time is clock, time is money, this has to stop cause it’s not funny!” Alberto read “Dwell on the moles on your girlfriend’s body, observe them by night like constellations”, and Jonathan closed our first half in a standing ovation. (And I don’t think that was because of the break). Sally opened the second round reciting: “I still love the lover I didn’t meet.” And Yara sang she still love Johnny. Daen read three poems, inspired by Wendy Cope and Martin Newett, listing “101 ways why he is David Bowie and you’re not”, and a multivoiced Charlie “in space anything is possible”, Antonia Klimenko was on our stage for the second part of her reading, and we have a second video, Betty rocked the house with a song-heartbeat-poem in which all the public participated. With Rufo “Will Coyote will fall forever”, Will “The night seems like a stranger”, Helen O’Keefe with the pseudonym of “Ukulhelen” played with her Ukulele a Russian tune in honour of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in outer space, overheating our secret Russian audience, Bruce came back to affirm “I’ve got a dirty brain and a dirty mouth, assholes!”, and Kelly with a sweet poem for her scracth-pad, Michele invited everybody to follow him in his psichedelic trips, Nancy II, David to close and invite everybody back on Novembre 2 for the next episode, but, hold on, the real end was Julien, Culture Rapide’s bartender who left his station and came up to read his stuff, reminding everybody that he’s a poet, too.

Charlie was on a blind journey. Rufo had a day at the zoo watching the machines-for-existing. The myth of smoothness dropped horribly into a pail. Gèno was crazy-obsessed with a machine à sous (one armed bandit? fruit machine?). Il a mit tout sa confiance en elle. I’d completely overlooked that in French machine is feminine, a missed opportunity for a poem there.
Susannah was a bad cat mother, shouldn’t be who she is. Ooog went fisting for your love. Yes, I do mean fisting. Rod Tame brought Saturday night from Deansgate, Manchester. The hangover endures on Unreality TV. Dominic Berry spoke of la machine humaine et la puissance des haricots. The stablisers taken from his bicycle, he feasted on speed. Thérèse brought une petite machine pour faire la cuisine. Jonathan’s library books were scratched with other people’s clichés. He found that there’s pleasure in thinking what’s been thought before. In retrospect, he admitted the poetry was a mistake. Memory is a machine that lies. When the vodka failed, he scalped her cat. Jason wondered whether, maybe, all we need is to watch TV together. Bruce brought Earth, Wind & Amplifier. A story shorter than the rope around his neck. Dorry Funaki read Edna St Vincent Millay’s Renaissance. Nina told of the New York Machine. Pia had that soap-induced feeling of being clean, and a permanent cigarette. Daen had too many hairdressers. And the Devil’s own nightsoil. (Any chance of a copy, Daen?) I was at 17 Poisoner’s Row. For Peter, feeling is a human error. Kezia was tied to the moon; friable. Francesca remembers the day you ripped up her poems. Alberto slipped memories into the mouths of fish. Quite one of Alberto’s most beautiful lines yet, I think. Charlie read The Tortured Artist’s Rant/This Guy Needs Therapy. Bruce had a chainsaw in his throat; tatooed letters.

Thanks to all who came.

Next SpokenWord Monday October 19th
Theme: Space/l’espace

The theme was school. John McNulty was sent to the back of the class. Sally described a break up in 6th grade. Sam admired the act; the small, persuasive scene; birds’ blood.

David Barnes (me!) asked ”What’s the craic?” Pointed to his box of stolen bibles. Dana was Unforgiven. Alberto was, and is, still trying to escape school. Who knows why humans kiss? Sally went commando. Erica got out her banjo, for a song about learning from mistakes (photo below.)

Sam got a lemur wrapped round his shoulders. Julie slammed to Betty’s beat on the box (clip posted below.) Bruce (last photo, below) gave us the story of an elevator repair man who saved a suicide jumper, among other things.

12 poets, singers, performers. Improvised poetry! And a full bar. SpokenWord is back!
I kicked off with an account of how I broke my arm the day we found the electric vagina in the cellar. Pieton, Utopianist, revait d’un pays qui s’appelle Noland, where there are no hangovers. Maxime, suffering from Mercury Retrograde, read from Lebanese (and Paris resident) poet Etel Adnan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etel_Adnan The sun revolves in cyclones… Christopher sang (no metaphor) that this poem is my stance – an imbecilic man falling off a ladder. Brought his broken banjo, missing teeth. He says my wife’s ghost lies with him. Sam gave a remote interview, looked over the piece of toast’s shoulder, charged the zinc. Armen Kassabian did his freestyle and improvised rap thing – you can find the pills we eat on his blog http://armandoloco.blogspot.com/ Alberto said something incoherent and unprintable about me and how he claims I really broke my arm, then launched into his jazz tribute to Archie Shepp, French-kissing a golden swan. Betty listened to Stevie Nicks’ loneliness, like a heartbeat. John Kirby Abraham brought the guy who tried to break the metro. Sally extracted from her novel a short piece: The Break-Up (God told me to.)
In the second half, Christopher was in a Sentimental Mood. Sophie smashed porcelain at German weddings. Betty broke through the wall between her voice and the world. Alberto apologised. I told about houses, used as homes. Bad dreams carried in the metal of the cars on the roads. Sam read Ted Berrigan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Berrigan which turned out to be stronger than alcahol. Lia spoke of New Year’s Day, breaking with the past, disappearing fast. Oog (yes, that is what he calls himself) advised everyone to Remain calm! Stay in your homes! Be happy! (Or you’ll be shot!) a text by Jello Biafra used on Ice T’s Copkiller album. And at the end, as the numbers dwindled to a happy few, Sandy brought out an ode about loneliness. feeling kind of funny, gotta find your number.

Next SpokenWord is 21st September. Theme – School.

SpokenWord returns Monday 7th September, 20h30 at the Cabaret Pop/Culture Rapide, as ever.
It will then be every fortnight until at least 14th December.

As I have just broken my arm, with the help of a certain cello player, the theme for the 7th will be Breaking things.

Cheers,
David.