Simon Smith, Kerry Featherstone & Helen Cusack O'Keeffe

19h30, 15th March at Carr’s Pub & Restaurant, 1 rue du Mont-Thabor, M Tuileries.

Simon Smith was born in 1961 and ran the Poetry Library in London from 2003-2007. He now lectures on poetry at The University of Kent. There are four full-length collections of poetry, the latest is London Bridge (Salt, 2010). In 2009 he was a Hawthornden Fellow, and has translated and published work by Pierre Reverdy, Apollinaire, Catulllus and Martial. He is presently completing a translation of Catullus for Carcanet Press. Here are some of Simon’s poems.

Kerry Featherstone was born in Lincolnshire, read English and European Literature at the University of Essex, and then completed a PhD on Bruce Chatwin at Nottingham Trent University. He now works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Loughborough University. He spent a year living in the Vendee and another living in Belfort, and has also spent time in the Limousin and in Paris. He writes in French and English (sometimes in the same poem) and also writes songs as part of The Orange (whose album ‘Concealed Exit’ is available on itunes, amazon, etc.). His in&#fb02;uences are Ezra Pound, Carolyn Forche, Peire Vidal and Dar Williams. His book on Bruce Chatwin will be published in 2011 and he is currently translating Ingriod Thobois’ novel ‘Le Roi d’Afghanistan ne nous a pas mariés’. Here are some of Kerry’s poems.

Helen Cusack O’Kee&#fb00;e says: “I am part of the Irish diaspora (ie subspecies), I was &#fb01;rst drawn to the other end of Europe, studying Russian literature. I spent several months in Moscow, Siberia and Petersburg. A&#fb05;er some dithering and dabbling at the Refugee Council and similar organisations, I studied a social work MA, researching bereavement in su&#fb00;erers of severe mental illness. Later, I pored over Mesoamerican archaeology for a year, and tried to learn an esoteric Mayan language. Since 2008 I’ve been based in Paris, where I write four days a week, and I regularly read at writers’ forums. On the other three days I work in a psychiatric team for homeless people in central London. Bittern’s Last Folly is a vast nineteenth century thing about the bizarre Bittern family and their various obsessions: chie&#fb02;y exotic archaeology and the rituals of Victorian mourning. An adapted extract from it is being published this April in an anthology of Anglophone writers living in France (Tightrope Press, Canada). ”

Here’s the facebook event.