The latest issue of Big Bridge is now online & I'm thrilled to be included alongside Paris-based poets like Alice Notley & Jennifer K. Dick. Check out my work (excerpted from any bright horse) here. And peruse the whole 30 Poets line-up here
My first reading from the new book! I was at the April 2012 Calgary Spoken Word Festival (founded by kick-ass poet & performer Sheri-D Wilson).
thunderstorms across a city that smells of jasmine flowers, crawfish, mules & mud. living on Bourbon Street (no lie), and reading Vincent A. Cellucci's AN EASY PLACE / TO DIE. because this city rings, an old cracked bell/belle:
“This book is a journey through the bookended history of poetry localized in the most magical place in America. The poems are eager to turn you on to death. Not erotically. Nor religiously. Nor philosophically. Simply. May they ease you as they ease me. We are all death’s children and we’ve yet to stop squirming but poetry is our grandmothers’ whiskey dipped pacifier. Poems are also words living on a page. Simple moments when world rings instead of your cell.” - Cellucci
John Kliphan is one of the reasons I'm a poet in Paris, and I'm going to miss him. John died last month, here in the city he loved. The Live Poets Society, founded, curated, and directed by John, was the longest-running reading series of its kind in Paris. Through Live Poets, we were given the chance to meet once a month--always in an excellent pub--to listen to new work, hear old favourites, and talk about poetry. For John, poetry was something very much alive and spoken; he used to explain patiently that Live Poets wasn't a Society you could buy a membership for...you simply became part of it by showing up, by listening, and by reading your work. He always (ALWAYS) wore a black beret.
John was one of the first people who ever invited me to be "a featured reader" and he actually paid his poets for their work, which was (and remains) a radical concept. He believed that poetry was valid, necessary, and completely normal, rather like breathing--a lesson which I continue to appreciate. I was lucky to read with John a few times, and I'm honoured to be part of his memorial reading on March 4.
Here's John Kliphan's poem for Chet Baker, from his collection, Chain Songs:
Chet
I don't want to die
I just want to go in the back room
For a while
March 4, 2012, 13h at The Highlander Pub, 8 rue de Nevers, 75006 (just off the Pont Neuf on the Left Bank) Reading begins at 1pm (NOT 3pm as I originally thought), and a wide assortment of Paris writers & friends will be reading from John's work. If you're in Paris, come on by! It'll be a very Irish-style of wake, I assure you...
what kind of noise exactly does a lobster make while walking along Italian marble mosaics? in honour of Gerard de Nerval, a pet lobster featured as a character today in the story-walk through the 19th-century arcades between Passages Jouffroy & the Palais-Royal.
then we warmed up our chilled toes at the ever-grouchy Cafe Nemours...always redeemed by the view onto Place Colette & the decent hot chocolate. made me think of meeting Janet Skeslein Charles there last spring in the sunshine, when we talked about writing & being thrown off trains in Belarus (seriously!) here's a link to my chat with Janet.
thanks everyone who joined me today in the cold Paris sunshine for the 'Mysterious Passages' walk as part of my WALK INSOLITE series! This painting is how I imagine Rachel, at a celebratory dinner a week or two after this story...)
after the beignets have disappeared - the tell-tale icing sugar trails out of the Cafe du Monde and into the night
