La Camino... Walking

After many years of loving Ann Carson's work, something always draws me back to the start, the day many many years ago, in my first year of college, when I read the essay KINDS of WATER in Best American Essays (now in her collection Plainwater). It was one of those moments when your body practically catches fire reading, where you want to leap up out into the world and share the text with everyone around you. I was sitting in a musty xchair in the Haymarket Café in Northampton. It was dim and filled with other college women from Smith and Holyoke feeding on the fumes of wannabe Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson-ness. I never thought my reading would lead me here, to the gritty, sweaty, reality of it: walking.

But here I am. On the camino of St Jacques, major walking for the next few months. I started off on the French holiday, Bastille Day, when I trained to see the 14th fireworks in Chartres, and meet with "Jacques" from th Chartres association des amis de St Jacques who dictated the start of my trek, supplied me with step by step instructions and maps as well as called ahead to arrange house stays for me. I have been touched from that moment forth by the total generosity of people, and hope that in my life and actions I can return all the favors being given to me!

As for the trek, This is day 2 and everything hurts, walked 32km yesterday and only about 12 today. About 20 to Chateaudon tomorrow. Last night, when I tought I just could not move another inch, I was welcomed in by a family with all 4 gfenerations present! We ate cold cuts, salad and peaches with whipped cream and I was asked about Obama, America, the trek, etc. I then slept in a cabana accueil for the Moulin Pelard at the bois de feugères.

Tonight, after a touristy wander in circles of the countryside, I am in Bonneval (not much farther down the road had I taken the straight route and not stopped off in Montboissier to scribble on a bench in the shade as an equestrian center took their horses out for a trot and where Chautaubriand once lived, and taken GR routes back and forth through the greeny countryside, stopping more often to make sure I was on the right route. It is the moisson, and so the wheat farmers are cutting and stacking the wheat. But I have also passed corn, sunflower and a yet-to-be identified crop of fields.

Starting, but not without setbacks: I got a bit lost today, which meant some unnecessary backtracking. And yesterday I ran out of water in the middle of a LONG stretch where there was no access to shade and the sun was pouring down (between la bourdinière and luplanté, then luplanté and beauville. At beauville I drank the water from a well by a church and was told it was likely choc-a-bloc with pesticides. But it was cold, and refreshing... so!

Anyway, I am off to Chateaudon the 17th, then Autheil the 18th then a HUGE walking day to Vendome the 19th where I might stay 2 nights to visit the city and get my next sleeping arrangements made. I will check back here and leave info for those of you following my trek!

See what's up over at IVY?

I felt it was time to blog like it was goin' outta style. So, for summer reads, to see who has read at IVY, or just to admire my blogomanic masochism (or, cooler yet, to discover some extremely awesome books, and book publishers in French and in English) check out IVY WRITERS


For an unfunded series, Michelle & I have had some wonderful people grace us with their words. Thanks!!!!

Post-Fête de la Musique

Paris annual--fête de la musique--is often a question of "to do or not to do" for many Parisians & ex-pat types, too. You have to like crowds, milling about randomly, really really bad music (so bad it is almost good!) and a sort of feeling of knowing this last, longest day of the year is another turning point, now back towards winter though the summer has only just begun or will soon begin for many. And it can be a time of au revoirs--such as saying farewell to DJ Whistlepunk aka Rob Keefe (pictured at left doing his thing at the Bistrot des Artistes) who has now moved to Sweden.

For me, Fête de la Musique is one of my favorite days of the year. I adore the odd random mix of music and "musicians".

This said, the "best" groups I saw this year were a pack of teens with some talent along rue de roi de sicile, a guy holding court in his own 'Rodrique' French cabaret moment on the corner of St Martin and duc de lombards, and a version of a shrunken band: 4 boys, about 10 years old, sometimes managing to hold all the notes and drumbeats together, other times looking a bit startled when a stray sound would escape and betray them. Who knows where they will be in 10? 20 years?


Anyway, outside the superpunkt moment at Bastille where my brother Kevin and I started our wander, we came across this fun Fanfare (in picture above left) on the corner of rue de Tournelles & Pas de la Mule. After, we headed into Place des Vosgues where every 20 feet or so was another group: African drumming at one corner, the French version of the Rainbow Chorus (all guys singing too quietly) at another. We did a little singalong moment to Yves Montand in a corner, where sheets of lyrics were handed round then gathered up again after each song. A French woman told me, teary-eyed as we finished our rendition of Le temps des Cerisiers, that you know it is a good song when it moves you like that.

The evening, and my brother's visit to Paris, ended as we wove back up the streets of Paris into the darker, quieter quartier I am now residing in: through St Denis, Fbg St Denis, up and over the tracks of Gare de l'Est to Louis Blanc (thus these last pics, below, from that).

It was a beautiful, rainless night for once, and a fabulous varied fête de la musique, or the attempts at making a bit of song amidst all that sound!

2 Group Readings: the 27th May & 2nd June!

I will be reading as part of two group events in Paris this and next week, and so if anyone is around, please come along and join us! Thanks!!

27th May at 19h30: READING: After-IVY (http://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com)
at Le Next, 17 rue Tiquetonne, 75002 Paris, m° Etienne Marcel or Les Halles:

After-IVY event !

Le Next & IVY Writers Paris invites you to hear new works in English by authors

Mary Ellen GALLAGHER,

Christine HERZER, Elisa MCCOOL, Jonathan REGIER, & Jennifer K. DICK

2 June: group reading for Van Gogh's Ear, 7pm at: Shakespeare and Company, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, 75005 Paris. Tel: 01 43 25 40 93 www.shakespeareco.org:

Margo Berdeshevsky, Jennifer K. Dick,

Michelle Notebloom & Roberta Vellvé

BIOS for both events, in alphabetical order:

Margo Berdeshevsky is the author of But a Passage in Wilderness (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2007) and has received among others, the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize for Beautiful Soon Enough, to be released in 2009. Her work is published widely, most recently in Agni, Kenyon Review, Poetry International. and The Southern Review. A lifelong traveler, her novel Vagrant, is at the next gate, from Red Hen Press. Paris is home. June 2nd reading.

Jennifer K Dick, author of the book Fluorescence, the chapbook Retina / Rétine & eBook Enclosures will read from new work in progress. She teaches at École Polytechnique & Lille III, has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, & is just finished with her PhD in comparative literature, which should be defended in fall 2008! Both readings.

Mary Ellen Gallagher moved to Paris years ago from Denver, where she’d she specialized in marketing and public relations, ran her own PR firm serving clients as diverse as the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund & the World Bank. Now she is completing her MFA in fiction at Lesley University. A writer of prose (for which she has won awards in France, the USA & Australia) & memoir, she will be delighting us with a series of works written in metros this spring. May 27th reading.

Christine Herzer is working on her MFA in poetry at Bennington College, Vermont. She has studied with Michael Burkard & Timothy Liu. She is currently in Paris to work on an artist book, & will be sharing new works with us. May 27th reading.

Elisa McCool, editor in chief of Come Hither magazine, hails from Austin, TX but has been living in Paris for 2 years. Her work has appeared in Skanky Possum & in broadside form for the Parvati Press Cross-Quarter reading series. She taught a poetry workshop in a men's prison in Iowa, & next year will join the MFA program in poetry at the University of Michigan. Don’t miss this chance to hear her work! May 27th reading.

Michelle Notebloom won the 2006 Heartland Poetry Prize for her first book Edging (Cracked Slab Books). Other work has appeared in Verse, Fence, Boston Review, Sentence, Columbia Poetry Review, MiPOesias, Los Angeles Review and Slightly West among others. She's lived mainly in Paris since 1991 where she co-organizes the bilingual Ivy Writers Reading Series. June 2nd reading.

Jonathan Regier is the author of the forthcoming Three Years From Upstate (Six Gallery Press, October 2008: www.sixgallerypress.com) & is hard at work on a new collection based on Tristan & Iseult. His work combines elements of storytelling with poetry. This will be his first reading in Paris! Poet & visual artist. May 27th reading.

Roberta Vellvé was born in New York City and has lived in Paris for the past twenty-five years. Her poetry has appeared in Pharos, Upstairs at Duroc, and in past issues of Van Gogh's Ear. She has produced several artist books as well as collages, and is currently working on a book-length poetry manuscript entitled Maybe There Is No Transcendence. She works at The American University of Paris where she is an editor for institutional publications. June 2nd reading.

Doug's visit to France

Continuing with the blogging of images theme, though I swear that words are coming. I just turned in the entire doctoral dissertation-- 500 pages before the biblio, and it feels a bit overwhelming. Don't think I have written that many words on anything before, and to have done so in French, well... thank goodness the hardest part is over--I hope! Anyway, Doug Stirling came to visit from NYC just in time to help me move, the poor thing, but here are a few great pics to share from the moments of vacationness!!!

More Collages, after all, why not?

Midnight Poems was a project with Michelle Noteboom, Lisa Pasold & Barbara Beck where we all wrote whatever came to mind at MIDNIGHT for 10 (or 11, who is counting?) nights straight, then we typed up these whatnots and shared them, each of us using this raw material as a basis for a series of poems we called works "orchestrated" by one of us, though evidently making use of the language by all of us. I also did a few collages, and here are three (the blue above, and two of the black and white ones below)

As I get ready to move, things emerge from old nooks and crannies of this place, and thus I rediscovered these old collages in a notebook from years ago. Yes, Sean, you are looking dandy in this! And so to end this post, here are a few more images.

What's in those journals? Sampling of my collages.

"WHAT'S ... FRACTURED IS PERMANENT--THIS ANGLE HAS A LIFE OF YOUR OWN. YOU'RE GUIDED BY REFRACTION" (after an art show in the 6th, image on the right is a modified painting by unknown artist (sorry!) : FYI--click on images to see them large.

















"Season Shift. Whisper White from passing overland. Beyond, the naked tree." (journal, after afternoon walk in fall, 2004, Tree from La Napoule.)

After JEAN BAZAINE'S "Artworks acceptied in Lieu" with paragraphs from texts supplied by Pompidou, 2006. Colorful abstractions by me, a little what not to accompany what CP called"cette faim violente d'une réalité 'extérieure', qui prend lentement la forme de notre réalité la plus secrète...l'abime se fait plus mystérieux, plus indéchiffrable à chaque plongée." Some of Bazine's works (writing and images) are available in books, i.e. chez Seuil.






L'AMOUR, CHEZ ELLE, EST SANS CONTOURS...LE JEUX MERVEILLEUX ET INULTILE... passion of Lichetenstein in Paris, yes, 50's encapsulated women pedestal-heads and chairs in the blue light, "Je savais bien que j'étais une fille et que je n'allais certes pas me transformer en homme, mais des choses restaient floues.." accompanied in this journal by a series of quotes heard during the Clermont-Ferrant conference 'Voi(e)x des Autres' on women's poetry (XIXe-XXIe centuries) such as this morceau by Maryline Desbiolles, or the other in blue here by Patrizia Cavalli. Stamps from the USA & Italia, small snippet also from a painting by Bernard Buffet, a bit of a door top right. Other colors by me, closure for another journal, another series of scraps of yet another life...

ARTICULATION OF SHADOW, body in pieces, the head of a dress a red maiden...a headless dress is :

Why waste a good visit to the Pompidou? This is a draft for a poem scribbled on one of my visits last summer (2007) to see the wonderful Les Messagers show, a retrospective of works by Annette Messager, pictured at the left by one of her series that (for me!) evokes masks, dreams, nightmares, bats...


FIONA Shaw in Deborah Warner's production at Chaillot of Samuel Beckett's "Oh Les Beaux Jours" in Sept 2007
("The body stuck in the mobile, the perhaps future we all live or could if not so") Collage & detail of collage using the show's program, my ticket to show, ("In the root system of a self to keep to be") journal pages of my words on the show, ("About age? Time? Time in slo-mo in a stop-time place of abandonnment.") scribblings over materials ("in a 'Willie!' echo of a past") with pens, white out, & colored markers (in the setting the rubble piece echo of a war-torn London sort of beach resort too grottoed).

New on Shelves: Anthologies, Translations & Poems

As the French say « parutions » :
so here are some recent—& older—appearances to check out.

JUST OUT : & recently reviewed, is New European Poets, edited & compiled By Kevin Prufer & Wayne Miller, with the help of a series of guest editors.

I have some translations in this issue, thanks to Marilyn Hacker—the editor of the French & other sections—inviting me to contribute, of two poems by Christophe Lamiot Enos. I am thrilled to help his work get to Anglo readers, especially as he is an excellent translator into French of American & English poetry. As for the anthology, it is a wonderful collection, “The poetry in New European Poets is fiercely intelligent, often irreverent, & engaged with history & politics. The range of aesthetics & styles is exhilarating” as the blurb says. (Cover design © Kimberly Glyder Design)

"New European Poets collects, for the first time, the work of poets from the latter twentieth century & the beginning of the twenty-first, together with new generations of translators of the poetry of Europe. For this impressive undertaking, for the knowledge, discernment & generosity of its editors, my gratitude is immense." —Carolyn Forché.

See it/buy yourself or a friend a copy, order it for classroom use via: clicking Here

FORTHCOMING: University of Iowa Press will be publishing the 12x12 anthology selected & edited by Christina Mengert & Joshua Marie Wilkinson In which I have some poems along with a “dialogue” interview with Laura Mullen, my once MFA thesis advisor & an author who has given me a great deal intellectually, formally as a writer, & as a friend & reader. I am really proud to be part of this 24-author anthology made up of many of my favourite people to read, so check back to hear more as the anthology goes to press!!! Congrats also to Christina & Joshua for their hard work on this!

REVIEWED: I want to thank Cecilia Woloch for what I found to be a really thoughtful review of my book Fluorescence & which appeared this past fall in Poetry International. The To order a copy of the review, subscribe, submit, etc CLICK HERE. It also has an excelent feature on Mexican Poetry Today (section edited by Jacobo Sefami) including the works of José Emilio Pacheco, David Huerta, José Luis Rivas, Mariá Baranda, Jorge Fernández Granados, Mariá Rivera, Dolores Dorantes, Alberto Blanco, Myriam Moscona, Gloria Gervitz, Tomás Segovia, Coral Bracho, Roció Cerón, Luis Cortés Bargalló, Laura Solórzano, Esther Seligson, Gerardo Deniz + New poems from lots of authors, translations, exciting book reviews, & more!

BROADSIDES FOR FREE: Also, thinking back to the time of Fluorescence, I went to CA & had a Cobalt Reading Series Broadside made. To see it & others, check out (click): "broadsides" including mine with the poem “As in, beginnings” downloadable for free, & from the reading in 2004, is really fun (or was for me!) to check out by clicking on the title above or cutting and pasting in the following link for "As in, beginnings" by Jennifer K Dick: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/111604.pdf

FORTHCOMING : Watch for poems “Articulation of Shadow”, “A Stanza in the snow as Equal” & “A slim box of her” coming out from Elisa McCool’s new/re-newed magazine, Come Hither. More news on that as it surfaces, but you may meet Elisa round Paris if you are here, she is an excitingthe spring semester—so keep on the look out for her own poems, & a chance to chat with her about author with lots going on, living in Paris through writing, too!!!!

I am also waiting to see translations of Albane Gellé’s work in CONDUIT, so will let you know as that comes about.

Always available by Jennifer K Dick: FLUORESCENCE (Univ of GA Press, 2004), ENCLOSURES (Blazevox Press ebook, 2007) or Retina/Rétine (Esteppa Editions Art/chapbook with trans by Rémi Bouthonnier and artwork by Kate Van Houten, 2005)