Reading in Paris - Thursday 3rd July

Paris Writers Workshop
and the literary journal Upstairs at Duroc

invite you to a reading
featuring prose and poetry by

Jeffrey Greene
Marilyn Hacker
Ellen Hinsey
Chim Nwabueze
Jonathan Wonham

At Forum 104
104 rue de Vaugirard
75006 Paris
Metro St. Placide or Montparnasse
(in the Bibliothèque of Forum 104)

Thursday July 3, 2008, 7 PM

Poetry Reading at WICE, 9th April 2008

The Paris literary journal UPSTAIRS AT DUROC

invites you to a reading of new work by five authors:

Sandy Florian, Choman Hardi, Christine Herzer, Chim Nwabueze & Simon Pettet

On Wednesday April 9, 2008, 7:30 PM

At WICE, 20 Boulevard du Montparnasse, 75015 Paris (go through street door into courtyard)

Metro Duroc, Falguiere or Montparnasse

Sandy Florian earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University in 2003, where she was recipient of the Francis Mason Harris Award for the best manuscript by a woman. She is the author of Telescope (Action Books 2006), 32 Pedals & 47 Stops (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2007) and The Tree of No (forthcoming with Action Books 2008). Her work appears in over 40 national and international journals. She lives in Paris, where she teaches at WICE and the American University.

Choman Hardi was born in Iraqi Kurdistan. Her family fled to Iran in 1988. She came to England as a refugee in 1993 where she was educated at Queen's College Oxford and elsewhere. She has published two collections of poetry in Kurdish. Her highly acclaimed collection in English, Life for us, was published by Bloodaxe in 2004.

Poet and visual artist Christine Herzer is working on her MFA in poetry at Bennington College, Vermont. She has studied with Michael Burkard and Timothy Liu. She is currently in Paris to work on an artist book.

Chim Nwabueze, poet and composer from New York currently living in France, is the author of Experiments and Drafts (USU 1998) and Convergences (USU 2004). He has done numerous recordings of experimental music around the musical saw (sonorous blade) of which he is a rare specialist: Among these are Improvisations for saw and piano harp (with Sylvie Menta, 1999), Working with ladders (with Kenta Nagai, fretless guitar, 1999).

Simon Pettet is the author of More Winnowed Fragments (Talisman, 2006), Selected Poems (Talisman, 1995), the collaborations Conversations About Everything & Talking Pictures with filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt. He edited Art Writings of Pulitzer-prize-winning "NY School" poet James Schuyler. Hearth, a book of poems, is forthcoming in 2008. He will be having a public interview session with Jennifer K Dick at WICE on 8 April & will give a workshop/special film session also at WICE this week

Come listen to poetry and music and pick up your copy of Upstairs at Duroc's Issue #9

Under Paris

A couple of weekends ago, I had a visitor from America, the writer and blogger Joe Milutis who writes the New Jersey as an Impossible Object blog. It was great to meet someone with whom I have only previously communicated through the ether of the blogosphere. Incidentally, Joe has written a book called Ether: The Nothing That Connects Everything which he told me all about. It sounds fascinating.

I thought it would be good to do something unusual when we met up, so I arranged a trip into the Catacombs. That's Joe standing by the memorial to Philibert, the only person to have died after getting lost in the Catacombs. Joe has done a good job of describing the visit on his blog, and he even has a short video of an impromptu poetry reading underground. Enjoy.

Readings in Paris

Jen Dick's Monthly Paris Reading Listing has been available to all those who want it as an e-mail. For those too shy to ask, it is now also available as a blog posting here and also on my sidebar for all eternity.

The Village Voice bookshop does a good line in poetry readings and there are two excellent poets being featured shortly, one is C.K Williams on Thursday 26th October and the other Marilyn Hacker on Thursday 9 November. Poet E.A. Markham will also be reading on 30 November to launch his collection of short stories. More details here.

Dial-a-Poet

I went to Shakespeare and Co. this evening and heard CM read some of his work. I thought he did rather too much name-dropping, mentioning how he had has poetry lessons from Alan Ginsberg and had read with Sharon Olds etc. etc. I guess this covers up a lack of confidence. He seems quite a shy person, peering out from underneath a mop of white blonde hair.

We walked towards the Metro together at the end of the evening. He told me that he had trained as a psychotherapist. Basically, he would listen to his patients' problems, somewhat in the manner of Freud, and thereby help them to understand what was wrong with them.

In fact, he was still able to do the same job in Paris, and this allowed him to pay his way as an ex-pat poet. He still had the same patients, but now they had to ring him up in Paris. The only problem was, he said, that they were getting better. That made me chuckle.

Then, he asked me if I liked the sound of his voice. I said I wasn't particularly fond of it, but that I didn't dislike it either. He said that the English accent is very popular in America, and then he laughed as well, but a little bitterly I thought.

He then started telling me he was thinking of trying to get some patients from England. I guess that was why he wanted to know if I liked his American accent. I suppose that wouldn't be a bad idea. The phone calls are bound to be cheaper from the UK.