me, you, you and the waning gibbous

how do you know how you know what you know

Today the morning
moon upends order
and crystals of gout
in knucklebones burst

Today I am what I fear most:
content, hence content-free.

washcloth

Fisher Price

The world is so big and that makes me happy
and life so short and that makes me sad.
Open and close, screams my daughter's car
Open and close! Open and close!

Election night reading

Poets Live is pleased to announce it's second reading of the 2012/13 season on Tuesday November 6th at Le Bal Café, 6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris.  

To mark the occasion of the US Presidential Election we have put together an all-American, all-Star line-up featuring 

Joe Ross, Amy Hollowell and Alice Notley  

More details on the readers below and at the Poets Live website  http://poets-live.com/

The evening starts at 19:00.  Hope to see you there.

I fell down arsed and got up clever;
many are called but few persist.

Manhattan, Manhattan, stomach and tripe

Funtana Coberta

The thistles, the dirt, the shadowless sun;
I will drink no more from the poisoned well
from where the poems come.

parsnip steam

trinidad rum and razor clams

tickling ticklish trout farm hands

Poets Live

Poets Live is pleased to announce its first reading of the 2012/13 season this coming Tuesday, September 11th at Carr's Pub (1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris).  The evening will begin at 19h and will feature three poets, Kate Noakes, David Barnes and Gareth Storey.  More details on the three poets below, and more details on the reading series at the Poets Live website: http://poets-live.com/

Kate Noakes is an elected member of the Welsh Academi. Her most recent collection is Cape Town  which will be published by Eyewear Publishing (London) on 1 October 2012. Her previous collections are The Wall Menders (Two Rivers Press, 2009) and Ocean to Interior (Mighty Erudite, 2007). Kate has a MPhil in Creative Writing and has taught for Oxford University. She has performed at venues as diverse as Glastonbury Festival and Henley Literature Festival. She has lived in Paris since 2011.

David Barnes was born in 1971 in Reading, England and studied American Studies at Manchester University. Since 2003 he has lived in Paris where he runs writing workshops and the very successful English poetry open mike he founded, SpokenWord Paris. He co-edited the anthology Strangers in Paris: New Writing Inspired by the City of Light (Tightrope Books, 2011) and self-publishes Issue.Zero Lit Journal featuring many poets from SpokenWord Paris. He won Shakespeare & Company's short story competition in 2006. His poems have been published in Spot Lit Magazine, 39th Parallel, Upstairs At Duroc and elsewhere.

Gareth Eoin Storey has been scribbling in notebooks since adolescence throwing various influences into the stockpot of his head. As much inspired by ol' dirty bastard as William Carlos Williams, and the usual: 1970s cinema, heavyweight boxing, Picasso, the black dog, misplaced meringues...His work has been published in horror sleaze trash, the smoking poet, alternative reel and various other rags and next year his first collection Hangover House will be released by black coffee press in Detroit. He loves Giulia and Fernet Branca.  

http://poets-live.com/

Sea Pie

I have just received a copy of the anthology, Sea Pie, which is published by Shearsman Books.  This book is a selection of work that originally appeared in pamphlets from Oystercatcher Press, the Norfolk-based poetry press that won the inaugural Michael Marks Award.  A poem of mine from my pamphlet, Make Nothing Happen, is included and (despite this fact) the overall quality of the anthology is extremely high.  Stylistically and thematically it is also extremely varied, supporting what Oystercatcher's editor Peter Hughes says in his introduction: "'schools' are best reserved for children, fundamentalists and whales".  I would highly recommend picking up a copy.

And in case you are curious about the name, Sea Pie is both an old name for the oystercatcher and also a kind of layered meat and fish pie which is known to have been served to sailors in the 18th Century.  A similar pie exists in Quebec where it is variously referred to as cipaille, cipâtes or six-pâtes.

in bed, an abstraction
cups us and the wind,
which had been hidden,
buttons loose and cuts

it is four fifteen or so,
I would have thought,
had thinking not been
last year's baby's baby

A farewell to nth

After three years editing the poetry section of the journal nthposition I am stepping down to make way for a new editor, Laura Bottomley.  Many thanks to my predecessor, Todd Swift, and to nthposition's General Editor, Val Stevenson, for giving me the opportunity to edit one of the UK's liveliest poetry venues and thanks also to all of you who submitted work during this period.  It has been a pleasure.

For those wishing to submit their work, details on how to contact Laura can be found here.

aoûtat

cheap wine head

Woke up this morning with light in my eyes
and anger like treacle all over my thorax;
the bridges have shed their mammaly penumbra
and stand again synthetic in the sun.
Cars fart, complete in their modernity
and commerce, the fluffer, goads the world.

William welcomes us endlessly anew,
ignores the rest of the station's hubbub

vats of kimchi strapped to his back,
doilies and sweetmeats, pockets of grass.

A kelp gull in the gray sky banks;
neck tumescent it enters the clouds
and passes the edge of the diverse morning.

Festival International de Poésie

Wallonian Words Before Breakfast fans will be pleased to know that I will be taking part in the 9th Festival International et Marché de Poésie in Namur which runs from the 21st to the 24th June.  Full programme and list of participants is here.

Panicked, awake
on a bed
in a city;

there isn't enough of anything left.

crowded shorts

I have been dropped on this soft bed
like something dropped from heaven

white rice

outside input

Lendemain de l'oulipo

Cabernet franc barnet, fernet branca face

Poets Live 

Harry Mathews, Doug Nufer, Ian Monk, Wendy Walker, Tom La Farge & Daniel Levin Becker

Le Bal Café, 6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris

tonight, 19:00

four leaves left

Tree

The tree
that stands
in the way
is the way
I see it
now
and
now
I don't

What is it then but a tightening in time;
my children's children, and their children's children too.

The man with a mop is mopping down the floors
That the chicken have slipped their big grease on

Poets Live tonight

Just a reminder that the May edition of Poets Live is tonight.  

Unfortunately Monty Reid has had to cancel but we still have three poets from the original line-up - Gerald Mangan, Eddie Linden and Meghan McNealy - plus two late replacements who prove true everything you might have heard about clouds and silver linings.  

More about them here:

Daisy Fried is the author of three books of poems, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh, 2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, She Didn't Mean to Do It (Pittsburgh, 2000), which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Award, and a completed but as-yet-untitled book to be published by Pittsburgh next spring. For her poetry she's been awarded Guggenheim, Hodder and Pew Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize and the Cohen Award from Ploughshares. She was awarded the Editors Prize by Poetry magazine in 2009 for a her essay "Sing, God-Awful Muse" about reading Paradise Lost and breastfeeding. She reviews poetry for the New York Times, Poetry and the Threepenny Review. She lives in Philadelphia, teaches in Warren Wilson College's low-residency MFA program, and is spending two months in Paris with her husband and daughter. 

Joy Katz, a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was trained in industrial design. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Fabulae, The Garden Room, and the forthcoming All You Do is Perceive, a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program. Her current project is a book of essays, Fray, about race (specifically, about being white) and voice. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Chatham University and lives in Pittsburgh with her husband the playwright Rob Handel and their young son, whom they adopted in 2007 in Vietnam.

And more about the others at http://poets-live.com/

Comme d'hab kick off is at 19:00 at Carr's Pub, 1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001.  Nearest metros are Tuileries, Concorde and Pyramides.

Next month's event is on June 11th, a Monday, and will be at Le Bal, 6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018.  But more about that in due course.

Poetry up at Big Bridge

Californian institution, Big Bridge, is 15 years old and I am honored to have poetry in their anniversary issue.  Big thank you to guest editor, Bonny Finberg, and to Big Bridge's stalwart editorial team of Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion.

grout again

new poems

I have some new work up at the art, literature and everything webzine, Retort. Retort has been dormant for a while so it's nice to see it rise again in time for our northern spring.

The room smelt of books and the girl patchouli

Poets Live

Sunday 25th March

Trevor Joyce

Fergal Gaynor

Vivienne Vermes

Jennifer Pinard

19h00 @ Carr's Pub, 1 rue du Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris

http://poets-live.com

Photos

Photos from last week's event at Shakespeare and Co are now up on their Facebook page.

Reading at Shakespeare and Co.

I'm going to be giving a blink-and-you-miss-it five minute reading tonight as the warm up act for the Australian novelist, Caroline Brothers. It's at Shakespeare and Company, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris and starts at 7. More info on Caroline and her new book, Hinterland, is up on the Shakespeare and Co website.

underdeveloped

skittish pudenda

endloaf

maul

stubbing my toe on the big man on campus

POETS LIVE

TONIGHT

PANSY MAURER-ALVAREZ, DEBORAH BOGEN, KERRIE O’BRIEN

Poets Live on Tuesday 21st February at 19h downstairs at Carr’s Pub, 1 rue de Mont-Thabor, 75001 Paris. Metro Tuileries. Admission free.

http://poets-live.com/content/february-21st-pansy-maurer-alvarez-deborah-bogen-and-kerrie-obrien

Nthposition

The nthposition website has been beset by technical problems these last few months. These problems are now resolved and new work will be posted there soon. Apologies to those who have sent work and been waiting a long time for a response.

Neonicotinoid

UPSTAIRS AT DUROC
invites you to a LAUNCH READING for its Issue # 13

Come pick up your copy and listen to new work by

JANE COPE KIT FRYATT

PANSY MAURER-ALVAREZ JOE ROSS

WHEN: Thursday February 9, 2012, 7 PM

WHERE: Berkeley Books of Paris, 8 rue Casimir Delavigne, 75006 Paris, Métro Odéon

About the readers:

Jane Cope is a Midwestern transplant to Paris where she is currently at work on a narrative sequence.

Kit Fryatt lectures in English in Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin, and organizes the activities of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies. Extracurricularly, she runs the Wurm im Apfelreading series and the associated Wurm Press. She won the Stinging Fly prize for the best individual piece of writing in The Stinging Fly magazine in 2009. Her work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Shop, The Argotist Online, Digital Behemothand elsewhere, and she has performed at many poetry festivals including Electric Picnic, the Flat Lake Festival and Hunters Moon Festival (Ireland).

Pansy Maurer-Alvarez has lived in Europe since 1973. Her poetry appears in anthologies & numerous magazines internationally. A chapbook, Ant-Small and Amorous, with French translations by Anne Talvaz, recently came out from Corrupt Press, Paris. Her other collections are: Dolores: The Alpine Years and When the Body Says It’s Leaving (both from Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn); and an artist’s collaboration,Lovers Eternally Nearing (Editions Thomas Howeg, Zurich). She is a Contributing Editor for the British magazine Tears in the Fence.

Joe Ross is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recentlyWordlick (Green Integer Press, 2011) and Strata (Dusie Press, 2008). He has also published Fractured // Connections . . . ,bilingual Italian/English (La Camera Verde Press) andEQUATIONS = equals (Green Integer Press, 2004). Former Literary Editor of the arts bi-monthly The Washington Reviewfrom 1991-1997, and co-founder of both the In Your Ear reading series in Washington, D.C. and the Beyond the Page reading series in San Diego, CA, he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award for his poetry in 1997 and is the three time winner of the Gertrude Stein Poetry Award in 2003, 2005, and 2006. He presently resides in Paris.

nipple chafe

hobel und reibe

theend

TOUT

ABUS

SERA

PUNI

humid moses basket case

I stopped on the foot

.........bridge to listen

............to the morning