Exploring other worlds

Spoken Word open mic
21h00 this Wednesday 30th Jan.
at l'Ogre à Plumes , 49/50 rue Jean Pierre Timbaud. Métro Parmentier.
opening at 21h00 with songs by Liam, Erica Stefanos and Conrad previewing their concert at the Maroquinerie.

Theme: Exploring other worlds

Martian poetry? Science-fiction stories? Exploring external or internal worlds? ''No greater miracle could occur than to see the world through the eyes of another.'' - truly another world. Utopias. Dystopias. Possible worlds. Imaginary worlds. Worlds that are past, gone, or lost. Interpret the theme as loosely as you like.

Bring your own stuff or other people's - and make it come alive.

And here's a space oddity - the poem that spawned the genre of Martian poetry. Craig Raine's A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.