Open mic/scène ouverte: Performance poetry. Lire vivant. Poésie sonore. Stand up. Monologue. Stories. Beat poetry. Spoken word. English. Français. Your own original texts. Old texts from Rimbaud to Dr Seuss, Beowulf to Gil Scott-Heron. Chacun a son mot à dire. Make the words come alive.
Report from 6th Dec
Spoken word Novembre 29 2010
On Saying Good-bye
“We shook hands in the summer
and decided to explore as much of the world
as one week of driving would allow,
but this interstate’s not long enough
to contain our enthusiasm for each other
so I’ll tattoo a highway
down my chest
curving around the places where your hands have left
subtle vibrations
running under the bone….”
Ariel Schmidtke
We opened like that. Wow.
Then, Angel singing an andalusian flamenco.
Mr.Perriello featuring maybe…. Shakespeare.
Haliy.
David.
"A heart can burn, and burn, and burn, but never change a mind."
Leander Lyons.
Check the following links for his next gigs:
IntO the mOOn
http://www.myspace.com/555793722
Fleur Offwood & the Conifers
http://www.myspace.com/fleuroffwoodmusic
Humphrey, Nadia and:
“A confusion of order,
a fair share of fame,
no one is better than the other,
my jazz, my soul.”
Kellyjoy.
Me.
Break.
Dylan. Georgina’s highlights:
“I’d like to apologize for getting it all wrong with the following people...
I’m sorry to Patrick- My first kiss. I should have snuck off with you to make out on the golf course. It would have been great! (Well, it would have been okay.)
To Dennis. I’m sorry I didn’t go with you to the eighth grade dance because, well, you were fat. I was fat too. I don’t know what I was thinking.
To Mr. Greg Greenberg. I’m sorry you were 22 and I was fifteen. But quite frankly, what were you thinking? I’m most sorry that our sexual experimentation never got farther than doing it to the Paris Hilton sex tape. I’m since discovered more inspiring love scenes.
….
To Jamie Keith... I’m sorry I got drunk and seduced you because you were the gayest-looking girl in the room. Short hair. Blazer. And I’m sorry for my quick exit the next morning. I put my thong in my pocket and I was outta there. It was less than elegant.
And then there’s Lola.... Lola. Lola. Lola. Lola and I understood each other. I’m sorry I was only in Milan for 3 days.
I’m sorry to Monsieur Hervé: that I thought it was funny to seduce a student; to screw a student. I’m sorry I pretended to fall asleep afterwards rather than listen to you struggle with the present progressive. You never got it quite right.
I’m sorry for that too.”
Emily. Lisa. Zoophiliacs. Cow Chris and Casanova Benjamin.
Joshua. Jacinthe.
Bruce promoting the “The Great Brain Washer Machine”
Save the date: Friday night, December 10, 2010. Cafè des Sports. Paris.
Last time we closed with the Panic Attack of an Artist
this time with the death of a poet,
meaning W.B. Yates,
meaning C.H. Newens
reading W.H. Auden:
“In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
See you next monday, drama queens.
Alberto.
Winter hits Paris... Report from 22 November
A Report:
Report from Kentucky night, 8th Nov...
Back from Athens, Stefanos with his wild & beautiful Bob Dylan hair... and Yara, performing Amberblind, ''a naughty little song by Stefanos.'' Great to have some songs, it's been a while since we had so much music.
To give you a flavour of what else went on: Benjamin knew well what he was fleeing from: Istanbul - the trains smell of damp sweat and sugared tea. Troy (reading at Poets Live this Tuesday) had a dim light growing between his legs, spin cap bottle boy. Marie read a story about a candy loving lesbian, Bourbon balls and girls. Beth reckoned holding the stars might wash your aura clean. Bruce's canvas drank them in, Art is his itch. He put the brutality down on paper. Max shaved off his beard, combed his hair. What clearer sign of the End Times could there be?Matt was a pilgrim of sorrow. So Ed spelt it out for us wordy fuckers, balanced directly between soul and sky: it's the slow explosion of trees...
Report from 25th Oct by Alberto & Sketches by Franki Goodwin of Mademoiselle London...
Many guests and premieres, Marie Claire Calmus, promoting her french vaudeville show, Dylan presenting his new book:
http://dylanharris.org/and/product/smoke.shtml
Katya and Franki launching Mademoiselle London in Paris
http://www.mademoisellelondon.fr/
Here you have an excerpt:
(and here you can see some original sketches and portraits of spokenworders)
“You know that book you wrote about Paris? Well I'm here now and it's nothing like you said it was
......Hemingway says
You have been given the gift of mystery my dear
You are a woman without reference
Anonymous in this pretty city
So be whatever you want to be
You can be a teenage 40 year old divorced lesbian vegetarian cannibal Jewish communist Icelandic samurai love child of the Pope
Paris is your maternity ward and you have just been born........”
(and here you can see some original sketches and portraits of spokenworders)
Two videos by Suzanne Allen,
one is available on our facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spoken-Word-in-Paris/165517768215
Then Kelda, Troy, Bruce and Heather, Alberto, Angel singing flamenco.
Emily, The Maxx, Troy, Anaìs and Damien, Tyler,
Leander presenting his new song,
David Barnes relaunching the vintage sexual education from the fifties…
Should your husband suggest congress then agree humbly all the while being mindful that a man's satisfaction is more important than a woman's. When he reaches his moment of fulfilment a small moan from yourself is encouraging to him and quite sufficient to indicate any enjoyment that you may have had.
Sterling Hudson featuring his grandma,
Ed listing 10 ways for draguering your french teacher,
Kelda singing Suzanne for Suzanne:
“And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.”
Midnight dot twenty, we have to close.
The neverending question echoed one more time after Michele’s last act:
“Why the plastic belly dancer is worried about my future?”
Cancelled SpokenWord for Nov 1st
Just got news that the Cabaret Pop will be closed Monday for Toussaints and so there will be no SpokenWord that day. :-( Next SpokenWord will be 8th November.
Apologies for late notice, the Cabaret Pop only just informed me.
If you're looking for something to do, Shakespeare & Co - the bookshop that never sleeps - have a reading that night link
David
Report from 18th Oct
Photos: Jonathan, Laura Mullen, Various Members of the Public...
Dylan Harris' tally was 2 U-boats and a minky, in a slippery light. Jonathan worked on a whole host of issues. Strange, fragmentary poems. Lily saw blindness, ratification, killing killing killing. Jen Dick sent out spies to every corner of the globe. Alberto reported the death of a slammer. Izzy, a South African poet stranded in Paris, woke up on Redemption Street. Laura Mullen reported on how the war is affecting the Oscars ceremony, and Various Sore Subjects. Flo was ni l'un ni l'autre. Probably still is. Jérémie a parlé à la lune, la voie lactée. La nuit c'est autre chose, un théatre magique... Maxx is generally more worried than married. Suzanne dropped stars into the skillet, they spattered and hopped... Don't call Bibu maladroit. And Michélé saw inedible traffic lights. Time for his breakfast on the transatlantic wheel.
Who Are You?
By Suzanne Allen
If you want to change your name, you have
to change your friends too. People who know you,
see you, need you to be one thing, have a hard time
calling you another. They need something
to hold onto, something to set their clocks by, some
way to remember where
in their little black books they put you.
They need something from you that,
probably, you can’t give them. They might ask
for the spelling of your new name, but have a hard
time remembering it when they introduce you
to other people. They will stammer, explain who
you used to be as if this
memory were more true than you, standing there
in the foyer, waiting for them to correct themselves.
They will tell stories about your last husband
or your next one, your old car, the time
you drove off with your skirt hanging out,
dragging in the street. They might even remember
the colors—the orange and magenta flowers
or the shiny black paint job that they could see
themselves in when you parked at their curb. But
in general, they will have a hard time
remembering. You will have to remind
yourself that you are not who they remember,
that you probably
never were, and that the whole friendship need not
be written off as an illusion. It was only a time
in your life when you were more like them
than you are now. And it made everyone happy
to believe, for a little while, that they
knew you, when in fact, they only
knew you when.
Alberto's Report from SpokenWord 11.10.2010
Lovely Spokenworders got together for this mid-October’s episode, as usual in Belleville.
Marie Claire Calmus was in the house, Dylan Harris, in the house, the house is Culture Rapide Cabaret Populaire, Eric De Jesus, visiting from Philadelphia was in the house too.
Check out his myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/ericdejesusisspokenword
Bounch of poets.
Even the bartender was performing his verses:
“Elle fait l’eour de l’horloge
Veut à tout prix prendre le large
S’aidant de quelques arpèges
Pour oser tournee la page.”
Gègé
Troy was there:
“Punching you on the face is fulfilling.”
Troy Yorke
And Caesar, Alexa, Miss Peacock, Nicolas, Magalì,
and me.
The psichedelic brainwasher Michele, Chris to the Newens, and Benjamin,
Bibù, Natascha from Russia, and Tyler:
“The debris of our collision seems to have been tidied.
Heat and noise have come to occupy your place.
Deceived again by my dreams, I surrender myself back to sleep.
It is there, after all, that you seem to exist.”
Tyler Magger
The Maxx, and to close the night, Suzanne.
She’s one of the Spoken Word’s favorites. We gonna miss her.
See you soon.
Or to use Alexa’s word:
“She brings out the best in me
We like ze wine and ze chat ah oui oui oui!!!
she’ll always be true blue to me
Cuz she’s a solid gold girl, a California Girl like me.
....
She’s a California sunset in Paris…
a star in the noontime sky
a taco full of laughter in a coffee shop in Amsterdam
a short ride on a long rollercoaster at midnight
Forever Bopping on
Hopping on the metro to the next dream…
See you soon Golden girl.”
- Alexa Rutherford dedicated to Suzanne Allen.
Report from SpokenWord 4th October
It's me! It's me!Knowing it's him, she hangs up.My life has a superb castbut I just can't figure out the plot.The autumn mosquitoReady for deathStings me.
Report from SpokenWord 20.9.2010
Tim specializes in poetry with eyebrows, angles and glances:
...while Kate knows that only 6 minutes of normal time remain. Then it gets weird.
Amy Dalton: online, on edge:
Other highlights included: Dylan's unsung contraptions & night spiders. Where's the blind watchmaker now? Mandoline: everyone love-hates a winter clown. They've coined the chemistry of love. Chris: Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke) Alberto: rolling and clanging under the bridges of Paris, a story of 2 who jumped off the bridge and onto a bateau mouch. Troy: last stop on the cuckoo car. Maxx: There is no 'If' (Robert Smith)
Poets Live - new reading series
http://poets-live.com/Poets_Live/Poets_Live.html
What happened to themes?
Wailing report from 6th Sept 2010
Sergio's god is only sand and wind in the desert:
Claire Trev, at her last SW for a while:
I saw the best minds of my gender ripped by feminine fantasies, dichotomous pretty, pretty birds,balancing on thin wires strung between sanity and independence sainthood and sin above societal shark tanks,pagans with primal instincts long repressed and forgotten in the quest to thrive aroused and awakened at the new moon to dance gratuitous circles together til desert dawn...
The Paris scene
Useful connections:
Jen K Dick’s listing aka fragment78:
http://parisreadingsmonthlylisting.blogspot.com/
Other reading series:
- WICE and Upstairs At Duroc: http://www.wice-paris.org/wice/ Follow links to Events
- Ivy Writers Paris http://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com/
- Double Change http://www.doublechange.com/
- Poets Live, Dylan's relaunch of LIve Poets Society http://poets-live.com/
About Paris:
http://ekleksographia.ahadadabooks.com/france/index.html
http://www.laurelzuckerman.com/paris-writer-news/
Relevant online reviews:
Your assignment for the next SpokenWord in Septembre
Next SpokenWord will be in September. Date to be confirmed.
Report from Le Grand SpokenWord d'Été 26th July 2010
Yo!
It comes from an extract from the LP "Cicciput" by “Elio e Le Storie Tese” which I've translated:
Every year a little piece of Tuscany disappears.
Every year Tuscany is robbed of its own land.
This year Tuscany is fifty-two meters under
its normal level of Tuscanity.
Tuscany is on the path to extinction.
Not because of corruption
Not because of globalization
Not because of ungrateful Tuscanese People
Every year
Every single person who goes to Tuscany
takes a stone away from Tuscany as a souvenir
and step by step, stone by stone we assist to this
destonification and detuscanification.
Don’t steal a stone from Tuscany.
If you steal a stone from Tuscany…
If every one took a stone home from Tuscany
Tuscany would be spread all around the world
and so all the world could be called Tuscany
but you couldn’t call Tuscany Tuscany anymore
means that Tuscany can be wherever in the world
Tuscany in Turkey, Tuscany in New Tuscadonia, Tuscany in Tinsel town
And nobody would recognize Tuscany anymore
Don’t steal a stone from Tuscany
Otherwise we don’t know where the fuck Tuscany is anymore.
We all want Tuscany in Tuscany and not in Fuckoffshire, New Fuckofonia or Fartsintheuniverseville.
Thank you.
Commitee for Tuscany in Tuscany
Check out John Fuentes' online poet community
He's also posted a video of his reading on the SpokenWord facebook page: click here
So now we take a break til September. Idea for next SpokenWord: write a deliberately ugly poem.
I leave you with my poem Temperature
One single unit of calorific heat radiated from a cooling sun
and now contained in this biscuit.
It has crossed space as invisible infra red in the fraction above absolute zero.
All that distance! 53 million miles in 8 minutes
(If God has just unplugged the Sun we will not know for 8 minutes)
This world a staging post only on heat's journey towards entropy,
its long fall through the billenia
that involves an unwinding of order
an unspooling of the tape of DNA
this universe shooting into decay
God's longshot
targetted on nothing,
ending in heat death
- that state where
all energy is dispersed
so finely as to be
entirely
useless.
See y'all in September. Keep thinking Ugly Poems.
David
And now, the gallery
Report from Skin/Peau 28/06/10
(But check out July 26th Special Summer Night)
Miss Peacock
The audience is clapping
the audience is tripping or sleeping
Sa peau de primtemps et d’etè
Sa peau silisse dont jamais je me lasse
Sa peau tendre ressin ou je me prelasse…
Gerard
Quand elle respire ou qu’elle se penche,
il y a toute celle peau qu’on voit, alors on franche
On en oblie où on travaille, où on habite
Gèno
Go robust buffalo go.
Tom
The Dudes plus Lars
You think you’re taking drugs
But drugs are taking you
You think you’re making money
But money are making you
Colin & The Dudes
hey,
that vagina in the middle of yr back
is mighty inviting
and you -
yr teeth gleam like a flashlight
whose foothills shall i grace ce soir?
which winding paths
the hole left by yr absence
isn't much of a consolation
that divine sparkle in yr eye
if i were the last man on Earth
and you were the last woman
would you dis me,
ignore me?
i AM the last man on Earth
you ARE the last woman
quoi alors?!?
citywide emergency is flakes of snow
Lars
David
He is the bad smell in your fridge.
He is the rat whose rotting corpse you saw
And that sewage washed up on your shore
There is nothing wholesome in his breath,
And death would seem the only cure.
When he speaks
It’s like toxic worms writhing in your ear
Don’t get too near
What’s clear
Is
That though he thinks he’s on a roll
He has halitosis
Of the soul
David
Chris and Jess
Xander is back