Report from Le Grand SpokenWord d'Été 26th July 2010

I write this from the depths of my hangover & while listening to George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London. The place got packed after a while and the temperature soared. (Temperature being last night's theme.) So. The report on the poetry & stuff:

Fundament:

Rufo heated his fundament in ''Hot tub.'' Dylan has had one of his poems extracted. A dance troupe has turned this poem into a dance. He assumes it's a dance, actually they've only sent him an audio recording of themselves clattering across a stage.

Hot and cold all over:

My own poetry was more concerned with the heat death of the universe. Contrastingly, Tate was all cracked lips, cracked ice in the rudeness of winter. Amanda has florescent white feet. Rosalia told of being the Disappointing African. Michele brought silver monkey rock and invisible painting. Gèno cherchait les ombres pendant la canicule. Josiane has a thing for clouds, all kinds, all shapes.

Meaning of Poetry:

For Patti, this was a game of nonsense. ''What is it to be a poet?'' John responded. Meanwhile Rufo noted his movements on a chart and Suzanne was sleeping into death, aware that her cats will eat her face.

Sex & Death:

''The hottest vacation's in bed,'' said Jeanne. Tate took steps of disobedience. Maxx read from Lebanese poet Joumana Haddad's book I have not sinned enough. If we are lovers, it is because of endorphins. This poisoning is love.

Insects:

Charlie was all smoke and exhaust. Conjecturing a contexture, he tried to recapture the rapture. Chris had a butterfly demanding to see its lawyer. Bruce could have landed on the back of a bucking bug. He pursued the destiny of all Terry Jacksons.

Tuscany:

And Alberto brought Don't steal a stone from Tuscany! In his words:

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