Readings

Monday June 11th, 19h00, at Le Bal Cafe, 6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris (métro Place de Clichy).

Poets Live is pleased to be presenting an evening of Oulipian poetry featuring Harry Mathews, Ian Monk, Doug Nufer, Wendy Walker, Tom La Farge and Daniel Levin Becker.

Wendy Walker is the author of My Man and Other Critical Fictions, Blue Fire, The Secret Service, and two volumes of tales. She is the editor of Proteotypes and co-leader of the Writhing Society in Brooklyn.

Tom La Farge has written two novels, Zuntig, and The Crimson Bears, and a book of “fablels,” Terror of Earth. He co-founded the Writhing Society, a weekly salon for constrained writing in Brooklyn, and has written the &#fb01;rst three pamphlets of a manual, 13 Writhing Machines, that discusses various constraints. Administrative Assemblages came out in December, 2008, Homomorphic Converters in September, 2009, and Echo Alternators, in September, 2010. “Three Writhings” appeared in the &Now Awards 2009. His chapbook, Life and Conversation of Animals, a deformation of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne, appeared in August, 2010. He’s currently working on a series of three novels, The Broken House, Skin, and Gathering of Ghosts, in various stages of completion.

Daniel Levin Becker is reviews editor of The Believer and the youngest member of the Oulipo. His &#fb01;rst book, Many Subtle Channels: in Praise of Potential Literature (Harvard) was just released.

Harry Mathews is an American novelist, poet, essayist, and memoirist. His most recent book is The New Tourism (poems, Sand Piper Press, Key West, Florida).

Ian Monk was born in London, but now lives in Lille, France. A&#fb05;er contributing to the Oulipo Compendium, he became a member of Oulipo in 1988. He has published books in English, such as Family Archeology and Writings for the Oulipo, in French (Plouk Town and La Jeunesse de Mek-Ouyes, and even in both (N/S, with Frederic Forte)). [Frederic needs accents Rufo’s e-mail can’t do.]

Doug Nufer is the author of seven novels, including the Oulipian novels Never Again, Negativeland, and By Kelman Out of Pessoa, and a poetry collection, We Were Werewolves. He lives in Seattle, where he sells wine.

AT : Le Bal Cafe, 6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris (métro Place de Clichy).

7pm, Tuesday May 22nd, Carr’s, 1 rue Mont-Thabor, M Tuileries/Concorde

GERALD MANGAN. Born Glasgow 1951. Poet, playwright, journalist, painter and cartoonist. Collections include Waiting for the Storm (Bloodaxe; Scottish Arts Council Book Award 1991); stage-plays include Crying Wolf. Former writer-in-residence at Dundee College of Art and at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh, where he also worked as an actor and designer. He has given readings of his work throughout the UK, Ireland and France as well as on radio and TV, usually accompanied by his own music. He spent most of the 1970s in Ireland and now lives in Paris, reviewing and illustrating for the Times Literary Supplement and other journals. ‘Mangan’s e&#fb00;ort is to see matters clearly, which itself becomes an expression of a&#fb00;ection.’ (Sean O’Brien, TLS) ‘Quite simply he is one of the best Scottish poets of his generation.’ (Douglas Dunn)

Eddie Linden (b.1935) Scots-Irish poet, editor since 1969 of the prestigious London-based literary magazine Aquarius. Born in Northern Ireland of Irish parents, he grew up in Scotland, where he worked in a steel-mill before emigrating to London. His &#fb01;rst collection of poetry was City of Razors (1980), and his most recent is A Thorn in the Flesh (Hearing Eye, 2011). ‘There is no one like Eddie’ (Harold Pinter) ‘Eddie Linden is a human event.’(John Montague) ‘If Eddie didn’t exist, no one would have dared to invent him.’ (Brian Patten)

Monty Reid is a well-known Canadian poet. He lives in Ottawa, where he was, until recently, the Director of Exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of Nature. He now writes and gardens full time. He will launch his new corrupt press chapbook, Garden (dec unit).

MEGHAN MCNEALY is a ‘Pataphysician, poet, performer, playwright, printer, papermaker, and polyglot. She is a New England-born Acadian who earned her Bachellor’s Degree in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College. Her texts have appeared in Wheelhouse, BirdDog, Admit2, and Slightly West; she has illustrated Nothings Houses: Prefab Eulogies by David Wolach [BlazeVox, 2010] and Collobert Orbital by Johan Jönson [Displaced Press, 2009]; her original performances have been staged at the literary conference, Press: Activism & The Avant-Garde as well as the 2010 Olympia Film Festival, Théâtre de Verre in Paris, and The Art Factory in Buenos Aires. Limite Désir (corrupt press, 2012) is her first chapbook.

Wednesday, April 11th, 19h00, Carr’s, 1 rue Mont Thabor, M Tuileries / Concorde / Pyramides

An evening of readings to celebrate the international quarterly Poetry Wales, with editor Zoë Skoulding and contributors to the magazine from Wales and Paris.

Jean Portante was born in Di&#fb00;erdange (Luxembourg) in 1950. He is of Italian origin and lives in Paris. He has written widely-translated novels, stories, plays and poetry, published in Luxembourg, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Québec, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovakia, Argentina and Colombia. He has translated numerous poets into French, including Juan Gelman, Jerome Rothenberg, Pierre Joris, John Deane, Gonzalo Rojas and Maria Luisa Spaziani.

In 2003 his book L’Etrange langue was given the Mallarmé award in France, and in the same year he won the French Grand Prix d’Automne de la Société des Gens de Lettres for his life’s work. In 2011 he was awarded the Batty Weber Prize in Luxembourg and in 2012 the Fondane Prize in Paris. His selected poems, La Cendre des mots. is published by Editions le Castor Astral (2005) His latest books are Le Travail du poumon (Editions Le Castor Astral, 2006), Je veux dire, (Editions Estuaires, 2007); En réalité, (Editions Phi, 2008), and La réinvention de l’oubli (Editions le Castor Astral, June 2010). As a novelist, his works include Mrs Haroy ou la mémoire de la baleine, which is widely translated.

Since 2006, Jean Portante has been a member of the Académie Mallarmé. In 2008, he founded, in France, with poet Jacques Darras, the poetry magazine Inuits dans la jungle, while in Luxembourg he edits the literary magazine Transkrit.

Zoë Skoulding’s most recent collections of poems are Remains of a Future City (Seren, 2008), long-listed for Wales Book of the Year 2009, and The Mirror Trade (Seren, 2004). Her collaborative work includes Dark Wires with poet Ian Davidson (West House Books, 2007), From Here, with images by Simonetta Moro (Dusie, 2008) and You Will Live in Your Own Cathedral with sound by Alan Holmes (LAF-Seren, 2009). She is a member of the group Parking Non-Stop, whose album Species Corridor was released by Klangbad in 2008. She lectures at Bangor University and has been Editor of the international quarterly Poetry Wales since 2008.

Lyndon Davies is a poet, reviewer and essayist living in Powys. He has published two collections of poetry, Hyphasis (Parthian Press 2006) and Shield (Parthian Press 2010) . His poems and critical articles have appeared in various magazines, as well as in the anthologies Poetry Wales forty years (Seren 2005) and The Pterodactyl’s Wing (Parthian 2003). With poet Graham Hartill he runs the Glasfryn Seminars, a series of discussion groups on aspects of literature. He is also a co-organiser, with poet John Goodby of the yearly festival of innovative poetry The Hay Poetry Jamboree.

Steven Hitchins is a poet from the South Wales valleys: born in Abercynon, currently living in Pontypridd. He tries to map these urban-rural, industrial-pastoral borderzones through collage and walking. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Wales, Fire and Chimera. His article ‘Poetry: Music: Space’ is in Junction Box issue 2. He occasionally edits the small press/little magazine/blog, The Literary Pocket Book, from which his homemade pamphlets The Basin and Palisade Winters are available.

Rhys Trimble is a bilingual poet, improvisational performer and editor from Bethesda and Pontneddfechan. He is interested in heterglossic, psychogeographic, mythic and radical pastoral poetry. Rhys is published widely, including in Angel Exhaust, Poetry Wales, Skald, Tears in the Fence, Aesthetica, Seventh Quarry and elsewhere. He was a John Tripp &#fb01;nalist in 2009 and winner of the Cinnamon Press Collection Competition. Recent publications include Keinc (Cinnamon Press 2010) and Mynydd (Hafan 2012).

Sunday March 25th, 19h00, Carr’s, 1 rue Mont Thabor, M Tuileries / Concorde / Pyramides

Trevor Joyce’s books of poetry include with the &#fb01;rst dream of &#fb01;re they hunt the cold (NWP/Shearsman, 2001), What’s in Store (NWP/ The Gig, 2007), and Courts of Air and Earth (Shearsman, 2008). He has produced workings from classical Chinese poetry, from Hungarian, Finno-Ugric and Turkic folk-songs, and from anonymous materials out of the Irish folk tradition. His recent work explores possibilities of found text, computer-mediated composition, and writing under constraint. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and is a member of Aosdána, the Irish a&#fb03;liation of artists. In 2009/10 he was Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry to the University of Cambridge. He is a director of the annual SoundEye Festival, which he co-founded in Cork in 1997.

Fergal Gaynor, born in Cork (Ireland) in 1969, is a writer, independent scholar and art critic. He co-edits the art journal Enclave Review and is a member of the interventionist art-group Art/not art. His poetry has been published in journals in Ireland, Britain, Belgium and the US, and his &#fb01;rst collection, VIII Stepping Poems and Other Pieces was published by Miami University Press in 2011.

Vivienne Vermes is a writer and actress who has lived in Paris for thirty years, a&#fb05;er coming here for a long weekend in 1977. She has published three collections of poetry Sand Woman, Metamorphoses and Passages (L’Harmattan), was winner of the Piccadilly Poets Competition, and has performed all over Europe - ar the Vilenica International Poetry Festival in Slovenia, as well as numerous venues in Italy and Austria. She has just completed her &#fb01;rst novel, The Barefoot Road, set in Transylvania. She makes her living doing voice-overs - notably the “Mind the Gap” voice on the Paris metro.

California-born poet Jennifer Pinard is a longtime resident of Paris, France. A translator of screenplays and art publications including books on Lewis Hine and Jean-Bernard Métais, she is also a freelance journalist, line producer for digital media and television, and copywriter for Google Creative Lab EMEA. Poetry publications include Pharos and Van Gogh’s Ear, chapbooks Delectable Curse and Dessous Dessus, and forthcoming books In This Invisible Resistance and Coming from Nothing.

Many of you will know that Poets Live was inspired by Live Poets, the reading series created by John Kliphan. Unfortunately, John died last month.

In accordance with his wishes, there will be a celebration of his life held in The Highlander, the old Live Poets pub, at 1pm on March 4th.

The Highlander, 8 rue de Nevers, M Pont-Neuf / Odéon.

The wake will feature readings from his posthumously published collection LOW LEVEL FLYING, to be launched at the event. Pro&#fb01;ts from the book will launch a memorial fund to support the publication of new young anglophone poets from Paris.

LOW LEVEL FLYING
John Kliphan
published by corrupt press
US Trade, 140 pages, €12
ISBN 979-10-90394-31-5

NOTE: the event was originally organised for later in the day, but was moved forward to avoid con&#fb02;ict with the rearranged Rugby international between France and Ireland.

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

Deborah Bogen’s two prize-winning full-length collections are “Let Me Open You a Swan” and “Landscape with Silos.” Her poems and reviews appear wiidely in magazines like New Letters, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review and Crazyhorse. She’s someone who started late, got lucky and intends to write to the end. She lives in Pittsburgh PA and just &#fb01;nished her &#fb01;rst novel, a YA book called “The Wych of Lepyr Cove.”

Pansy Maurer-Alvarez was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Pennsylvania and has lived in Europe since 1973. She started writing poetry in her teens. She did her literary studies at universities in the US, Spain and later in Switzerland, where she worked for a time as a teacher and translator. She began writing full time and publishing widely, a&#fb05;er moving to Paris and studying with Alice Notley, some 20 years ago. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and numerous magazines throughout Europe and the States and some of her poems have been translated into French, German and Spanish. She has read at many venues in France, the UK and the US and has lead workshops in the UK. Her collections are: Dolores: The Alpine Years and When the Body Says It’s Leaving (both from Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn); Lovers Eternally Nearing, a limited edition, &#fb01;ne press collaboration with the Swiss artist Walter Ehrismann, with German translations by Rudolf Bähler (Editions Thomas Howeg, Zurich) and just out from corrupt press, Paris, Ant-Small and Amorous, with French translations by Anne Talvaz. Pansy is a Contributing Editor for the British magazine Tears in the Fence; she lives in Paris mainly and Zurich sometimes and she makes one-of-a-kind bead jewelry (to sell).

Kerrie O’Brien has been published in various Irish and UK literary journals including Southword, Orbis, two issues of Crannóg, Revival, Icarus, The Cathach, College Green, Ropes, Daydreamer, Wordlegs, Minus 9 Squared, The First Cut, Boyne Berries, Stony Thursday, The Poetry Bus, Outburst and Burning Bush II and Ra&#fb05; Magazine. She will also have poems appearing in the forthcoming edition of Five Poetry Journal. Her poem Blossoms has been chosen as the winning entry in the Emerging Talent category of the 2011 Yeats Poetry Competition. She has also been highly commended for the Over the Edge New Writer of The Year Competition 2011. She was recently featured poet in The First Cut. Her new poetry book Out of the Blueness is now available for purchase.

Announcing the corrupt christmas bash!

Patrick Williamson will launch Bacon, Bits & Buriton & Rufo Quintavalle will launch Liquiddity – *and* there might just be some more TBD shennagins. :-)

Poets Live on 22nd November at 19h downstairs at Carr’s Pub, 1 rue de Mont-Thabor, 75001 Paris. Metro Tuileries. Admission free.

Ian Monk was born near London, but now lives in Lille, France, where he works as a writer and translator (of, among others, Georges Perec, Daniel Pennac, Raymond Roussel and Marie Darrieussecq). A&#fb05;er contributing to the Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Press) he became a member of the Oulipo in 1988. He has published books in English such as Family Archaeology and Writings for the Oulipo (Make Now), in French (Plouk Town and La Jeunesse de Mek-Ouyes (Cambourakis)), and even both N/S (with Frédéric Forte (Editions de l’Attente).

Amy Hollowell is an American-born Parisian poet, journalist and translator. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications in Europe and the United States. She helped edit the Paris-based review Pharos, founded by Alice Notley and the late Douglas Oliver, and is a former student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Her bilingual chapbook Ultrasound/Ultrason, with translations by Célin Vuraler, was published last year in Paris. As a journalist, she covered French politics and culture in the 1980s and has long been a sta&#fb00; editor at the International Herald Tribune. Her translations include works by Georges Bataille, Alberto Giacometti, Yves Bonnefoy, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Catherine Millot and Matthieu Ricard, as well as a 21st-century translation, with Joa Scetbon-Didi, of one of the fundamental texts of Buddhism, the Heart Sutra. In 2004, she founded the Wild Flower Zen group, which she continues to lead in France and Portugal and online at zenscribe.ovh.org.

Megan Fernandes is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the editor of Strangers in Paris (Tightrope Books, 2011) and has a forthcoming chapbook, Some Citrus Makes me Blue (Dancing Girl Press) to launch in Chicago in January 2012. Megan is the graduate coordinator for Literature and the Mind and directs the Poetry/Poetics Hub at UC Santa Barbara.

Oct 11th, 19h00 for 19h30, Le Next, 17 rue Tiquetonne (M Metro Etienne Marcel/ RER Les Halles).

For up-to-date information, browse the Ivy Writers blog.

Lars Palm lives in Malmö. He has been publishing poems for 20 years & chapbooks for 10 years in Sweden, the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Italy, Australia & Japan. His &#fb01;rst long book road song for was recently published by corrupt press. With his lovely wife Petra he had a photo & poetry exhibition & published two online chapbooks. He translates to & from Swedish, English & Spanish, sometimes as a part of the translators’ collective, & now small press, Kompassros. Poems of his have been translated into Spanish & Japanese. He might also say that he runs a small ungovernable press, works way too much for way too little pay, & enjoys cooking & travelling.

19h00, Carr’s, 1 Rue du Mont-Thabor, M Tuileries

Peter Hughes is a poet, painter and the founding editor of Oystercatcher Press. He was based in Italy for many years and now lives on the Norfolk coast. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry which include The Metro Poems, Paul Klee’s Diary, The Summer of Agios Dimitrios, Behoven and The Pistol Tree Poems. Nathan Thompson has described the latter as ‘&#fb02;ickering, intense, innovative and utterly mesmerising’.

Pearl Pirie grew up in the wilds of the Ottawa Valley, Canada. She mashes rural sensibility with urban ventriloquist frost. Her second trade collection, Thirsts, was recently published by Snare Books. It won the Robert Kroetsch Award for innovative Poetry. Her &#fb01;rst full collection been shed bore came came out with Chaudiere Books in 2010. Her poetry has appeared in ditch, anthology 4 (canadian) (innovative poets) among other place. She has a micro press named phafours. She teaches workshops on poetry.

Pearl will launch her corrupt press chapbook, Mammals of Hoarfrost.

A native New Yorker, Bonny Finberg has traveled through Europe, India and Nepal. Her work has been translated into French, Japanese and Hungarian. Publisher’s Weekly said that her &#fb01;ction in Best American Erotica “exudes a stunning sensual sensibility.” Her &#fb01;ction, poetry and reviews have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and online zines. Her poetry is included in the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thundersmouth) and her &#fb01;ction in Evergreen Review, four Unbearables anthologies (Autonomedia) as well as Lost and Found: New York Stories from Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. She is a regular writer for A Gathering of Tribes and Sensitive Skin. She has written music reviews for The Brooklyn Rail which also published an excerpt of her novel Kali’s Day. In Paris she has contributed to Le Purple Journal, Upstairs at Duroc, and Van Gogh’s Ear. Her chapbook of short stories, How the Discovery of Sugar Produced the Romantic Era is featured in the video 5 Guys Read Finberg. Her photography has been published in both print and online art journals and exhibits, including the group show “A Book About Death” at the Emily Harvey Gallery in NY; “Seeking Kali;” and A Gathering of Tribes Magazine. Her written work and visual art are archived in the “Downtown Writers” collection at the NYU Fales library. She lives in Paris and New York, and is working on her second novel.

Bonny will launch her corrupt press chapbook, Déja Vu.