Shakespeare's Death Day: report from 23rd April

by David.
Photos by Marie De Lutz

It was Shakespeare's Death Day. And somebody's birthday too, who could it be? Oh yes, me! Unsex me now!cried Kate, filled to the top with direst cruelty. "You're not drunk - the floor's just moving," responded James. Alberto took arms against a sea of English grammar. Jason filled the breach with English dead, which may be 'cos he doesn't like the English or may be because he was out to antagonise the French against us. Troy responded to Jason with words from Cassius. And then, and then... I'll come to more non-Shakespearean stuff in a sec but first - the witches! Check out the witches, fresh from Tesco:

Glam rock witch

Scots witch, Glam rock witch & French Resistance witch... just back from Tesco to cook up something wicked



How cool is that!
Some other fragments:
Shane's nomad conversing with a dead dolphin. Pablo's panic attack. Melanie skipped a step when she should have said "Fuck you!" Moe leaned into the afternoon. Sonny Shula sang. Ferdia with a deleted scene from Hamlet. Gina: Life as a whore. Antonia:


Write a poem to heal the world
Write a poem to heal yourself!
Use your own blood for ink if you must
Put your rage on the page—
a conscious explosion—
ashes to ashes…dust to stardust
Wave it like a banner—
 Transcend without end… in change we trust                                     
March with it at anti-word demonstrations
Write the wrongs of corporate condemnations—
of leftover dreams
of songs bruised and broken
by those who never learned to scream properly
with their mouths wide open!
Be the shining star you are! a meteor!—just own it!
Make it come alive!
Be in the moment!
Come shoot off your mouth!—
just don’t blow it!

More tonight, and every Monday, downstairs at the Chat Noir!
76 rue Jean Pierre Timbaud
Sign up from 8pm, poetry starts 9pm

Cheers all,
David

Spoken Word in Paris 16-04-2012. Report By Alberto. Photos by Marie De Lutz.

 
                       Our featured poet is a welshman with the magic stick: Rhys Trimble! 


 
Magda Rosinski opens sending him to sleep with a story, already? Roxanne reading A.A.Milne (the creator of Winnie The Pooh?) Kate ravaging the land. Jason translating Cane Rabbioso by Angelo Petrella. Yann on the roof of the Montparnasse Tower. Julien Calas about some romance ended, but not regrets. “Liar!” somebody shouts from the audience. Caroline: we all have some great great from Italy, 8 aunts, 22 cousins. Alberto dropped a tea bag from the fourtheen floor. Moe’s spring poem: maple up my ass. Sid wanted to learn a poem by heart written by a British poet for the British Poetry Month then she found out the poet is American and they don’t even have a British Poetry Month, just a British Poetry Day. Vicki Feaver. Isn’t she English? Gabriel and a saxophone:



                                                "I miss the white of night in January."   


Patrick Cash shared with us a poem about very embarrassing things you don’t want to tell anybody. Last time for Debbie Hu: Stomach Acid: the first throw up was yellow. Keep in touch. Vanessa Wright on racism. Chris Newens introducing next sunday Unstrung Letter aka Jason’s lecture: “From factory to facebook, a marxist critique of the current crisis.” James’s letter to Dana, Dana’s letter to James. “The Canadians will raise the prize of water. Assholes!” Lucy Gelman for her neighbour! Jessanyn: “No sex on Ikea tables, we were different.” Fatima Naravati’s first time or advanced apology to her parents. Gina Bonati’s song: “What should I do? What did I do? He was fleshy.” Camille and Betty doom doom Mathe-Mama-Ma-Tic. Ben’s shadows upon their knees. Kirby Mason’s Discovery, Robin Lee and a final act by Rhys Trimble. See you next Monday to celebrate William Shakespeare’s Death Day and David Barnum’s Birthday!     





Report from 9th April

Photos by Marie de Lutz
Video & words by David Barnes

Hansel and the Candy Crook, by Troy:


Tonight
Troy showed up. He'd threatened to respond to Jason's stripping (and wasn't there a poem involved?) 3 weeks ago. He's still threatening, as Jason didn't show up.
We had disobedience, A.A.Milne style, with cellular sensations all the way down to the double helix.
Then a right hook from a headcase called Sharon, in Prague.
That solidified the experince for David Fishel; he looked for a swarm of words.
There are 3 kinds of mindless violence.
"The easter eggs are hidden in the nettle patch and the timer is running," said Emily, as she ran off to work in marketing. Someone was secreting away hours in cigarette boxes, unlocking spaces in him he'd forgotten he had.
Alberto's twin brothers pretended to be Siamese. It was spring time in Paris and Troy had a poem about Christmas.Georgina towered in Babel.
Edward read Stuart Leonard's Taking Brooklyn Bridge - see here at Occupy The Press
And David F, here on loan to us from his Ginsberg-Gainsbourg night in New York, refused to say the "ch" word, out of respect.


Say cheese!

How many years bad luck is this?

What's so funny?

David Fishel: more Ginsberg or Gainsbourg?



Next SpokenWord: tomorrow, Monday, featuring Rhys Trimble and his stick as star guest.

Spoken Word in Paris 02/04/2012

Report by Alberto
Photos by Marie De Lutz.
Music by Frank Sinatra.



Attention please: the running order might change at random. Kate’s tribute to Adrienne Rich and to the new Nokia vibrating tattoo. Ian W. Sperber’s Impro. Guest crooner Sonny Shula singing “One of Those Things.”
Yann’s first time: Horses, Orchids and Credit Cards:

Some people like horses.
Big mammals, like a giant
dog with square teeth,
towering, rippling canvas bags
of muscle and primitive thought.
Horses are just another large thing
that makes me very uneasy.

Emily Ruck Keen’s Poem on my mother and wine:

My Mother
...
She is a sad breathless frog
on a parched armchair
Remote control, locus of the room's energy

Silence hangs here like cigarette smoke
There is nothing to tell, except that
Loneliness is framed
in family photos
...




David Barnes’s “Higher than a high wire walker.”


Higher than a high wire walker
she orbits earth/satellites the world
Hung out to dry, clotheslined to the capsule,
her breath is frozen crystals and hashish smoke.
What reels her in?
her 3 year old son
the living cord
the pulse pulse oxygen rich and heat 




Arazo: Happy Birthday Mina. I hide in the bottle. I can hear my name. Brianna wrote in a Starbucks. Patrick I’m not a Crazy Messiah. Ex stripper Jason redeem his soul translating Saramago. Sid wanted to read from her novel but a situationist avangard action by Ashley, Chris, Ferdia, Shane and Emma broke in promoting Fifth Wall, the new international comedy troupe.



Debbie: If I had three wishes:

1. Something.
2. No more something.
3. Three wishes.

Lizzie goes fishing. Leonie leaves Paris and poetry sounds poetic. Georgina’s Mithological trip. Rigettini’s Falling Stars Kamikazes. Austin’s one liner: I’m always moving from side to side. Magda glares with hatred, she wants to destroy you. (Who? David Barnum? The Bartender Nico?) Rachel: This man has a big dick (D.B.? The bartender N.?) I’m Jewish. I don’t know what that means.” Jane: I said what? and she said: Dig! I said: Are you Roger? and she said: Who’s not? Shane: I knew I had an important life catching frogs and throwing rocks. Lucy: The Only Enjoyable Part of Writing a Thesis. Is that your clitoris becomes a drumset. Sonny Sinatra Shula. Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on a, Jupiter and Mars. In other Spoken Words, hold my hand, baby, kiss me.