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)

Questionnaire on Contemporary Poetry by Women

If you have followed my blah blah blahing on here, you might recall my mentioning the wonderful colloque I attended in Clermont Ferrand this fall, organized in grand style by Patricia Godi, and also my advice for everyone to go and check out the reflections on women in poetry, or women writing poetry, or however you wish to term it, that appeared both in French on the Poezibao sight run by Florence Trocmé, and in English in the article that appeared in the Chicago Review this fall & is online at their site. Funny enough, since then Nicholas Manning contacted me to be involved in a wonderful survey project here in France as part of a series of follow-up articles to be written about these questions. So this is a CALL FOR YOUR HELP!

Yes, if you are a poet/author, male or female, living abroad, please answer the questionnaire below and send the responses to Nicholas Manning and Myself at the emails provided, or you can email us and we will email you a survey to fill out. We really appreciate it! The questions can be answered in French or English, as here I provide the questionnaire in both languages too.

Questionnaire on Contemporary Poetry by Women

In 2007, the American poets Stephanie Young and Juliana Spahr published an important article in “The Chicago Review” concerning the publication and reception of contemporary poetry by women. Young and Spahr now intend on expanding this article to address the situation of women poets outside of the US. We are sending you this short questionnaire because, as an anglophone poet or writer currently residing overseas, your insights into the position of women poets outside of the US will be of enormous value in the development of this study. Your responses may be included in the further publications which Young, Spahr and others are preparing on this pressing and vital issue. Try to respond to the questions as briefly as possible, in one or two sentences, we will follow up with you if we seek more in depth reflections. Please send your responses to Nicholas.Manning@ens.fr and fragment78@gmail.com by 31 March 2008 thanks. Also, pass this on to other authors living abroad!
Our sincerest thanks!
Jennifer K. Dick and Nicholas Manning

Questionnaire in ENGLISH:

Your Gender:____male_____female

1) How many collections/chapbooks have you published? (Chapbook = less than 30 pages). How was your first collection/chapbook selected for publication? Was it chosen by an editor whom you didn’t know, a contest, or by a personal contact?

2) Do you read contemporary poetry written by women? Would you say you read more/less/as much poetry written by women as by men? Do you sometimes have the impression that you have to “make an effort” to find contemporary poetry by women?

3) As you reside abroad, how much time do you spend out of your country of residence annually (in general)? What is your current country of residence, and what is your general impression regarding the reception of women’s poetry in your current country of residence? Do you think there are more/less/as many opportunities for women poets to publish collections/have poems selected in anthologies/have poems published in literary journals? Do you think that women receive less/more/as many literary prizes as men?

4) Do you think that there should be anthologies of contemporary poetry entirely devoted to the work of women? Would you be interested in buying them? Similarly, do you think that there should be anthologies of contemporary poetry entirely devoted to the work of men? Would this constitute a politics of exclusionism? How would you justify such anthologies?

5) Do you think that, in your current place of residence, there are the same number of female book and magazine editors and publishers as there are male editors and publishers? Does this have an influence on the opportunities for women to publish their work?

6) Do you think that women poets demonstrate more reticence than men in sending their work out to editors and publishers?

7) Do you think that men can, or should, play an active role in trying to increase publication and visibility of work by women poets? If yes, how might this effort manifest itself?

8) Would you prefer to send your work to an editor of the same sex?

9) How do you perceive the reception of the work of women in your current country of residence? Do you feel that there are more or less opportunities for women to be publish there than abroad?

10) If you think that there are problems regarding the publication and reception of contemporary poetry written by women, how might we go about fixing this? How could the situation be best improved?

11) Do you have anything else to add regarding the state of poetry by women in your current country of residence, or in comparison or contrast to your country of origin? What else might we need to know?

Questionnaire sur la poésie
contemporaine écrite par les femmes

Présentation

En 2007, les poètes américains Stephanie Young and Juliana Spahr ont fait publier dans le « Chicago Review » un article important sur la publication et la réception de la poésie contemporaine écrite par les femmes. Elles voudraient maintenant élargir cet article pour parler non seulement de l'écriture des femmes aux Etats-Unis, mais dans le monde entier. Nous vous adressons ce petit questionnaire (ci-dessous et ci-joint) car, en tant que poète ou écrivain (ou éditeur), vos réponses aux 10 questions suivantes seront d'une grande valeur dans l'élargissement de cette étude, et pourraient éventuellement faire partie de la publication que préparent S. Young et J. Spahr. Vous pouvez envoyer vos réponses aux adresses suivantes : Nicholas.Manning@ens.fr et fragment78@gmail.com avant le 31 mars 2008 svp. Veuillez aussi faire suivre ce questionnaire à d'autres poètes et écrivains. Merci!
En vous remerciant d'avance !
Jennifer K. Dick et Nicholas Manning

Questionnaire en français

Etes-vous ____homme, ou ____femme ?

1) Combien de recueils/plaquettes de poésie avez-vous publiés ? (Plaquettes = moins de 30 pages). Comment votre premier recueil/plaquette a-t-il été initialement choisi pour une publication ? Est-ce que c'était par un lien personnel, ou bien par un éditeur que vous ne connaissiez pas ?

2) Est-ce que vous lisez de la poésie contemporaine écrite par les femmes ? Lisez-vous plus de poésie écrite par les hommes ou par les femmes ? Sentez-vous que vous avez dû parfois « faire un effort » pour trouver des recueils de poésie écrits par les femmes ?

3) Quelle est votre impression générale sur l'accueil, au sein des milieux littéraires français, de la poésie des femmes ? Croyez-vous qu'il y a autant/moins/plus d'opportunités pour les femmes de faire publier des recueils, des poèmes dans des anthologies, et des poèmes dans des revues littéraires ? Avez-vous l'impression que les femmes reçoivent autant/moins/plus de prix littéraires que les hommes ?

4) Pensez-vous qu'il devrait y avoir des anthologies de poésie contemporaine entièrement dévouées au travail des femmes ? Voudriez-vous les acheter ? De même, pensez-vous qu'il devrait y avoir des anthologies de poésie contemporaine entièrement dévouées au travail des hommes ? Croyez-vous que cela constitue une politique d'exclusion ? Comment justifieriez vous l'édition de telles anthologies ?

5) Croyez-vous qu'en France le nombre d'éditrices dans les maisons d'éditions, et de rédactrices en chef dans les revues littéraires, soit égal au nombre d'éditeurs et de rédacteurs ? Est-ce que cela a une influence sur l'opportunité des femmes à publier leur travail ?

6) Pensez-vous qu'il y ait une réticence chez les poètes femmes à envoyer leur travail aux éditeurs ? Si oui ou non, pourquoi est-ce que cela pourrait être le cas ?

7) Pensez-vous que les hommes peuvent (ou doivent) jouer un rôle actif/positif dans l'édition du travail des femmes ? Si oui, comment ?

8) Préféreriez-vous envoyer votre travail à un éditeur du même sexe ?

9) Si vous pensez qu'il existe des problèmes quant à la publication et à la réception de la poésie des femmes, que devrait-on essayer de faire pour améliorer cette situation ?

10) Avez-vous quelque chose d'autre à ajouter par rapport à la réception et à l'édition de la poésie des femmes en France et à l'étranger ?

Merci !

JKD at POEZIBAO on Florence Trocmé’s Anthologie Permanente

POEZIBAO:

An ANTHOLOGIE PERMANENTE
For those of you not in France, or as of yet unaware of the astounding resource for poetry-lovers that the site POEZIBAO (written & run by FLORENCE TROCME) offers, let me just say, check it out! I do, of course, mention this today as I am thrilled to have made my first poetry entry onto the site! Yes, see

http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2007/11/anthologie-p-20.html for 2 translations into French [one by Jacques Demarcq (+click his name here & you can also see his own works & hear him read his own poems!) & the other by Christophe Lamiot Enos(+click his name to see work by him at Poezibao, too!)] from my chapbook Enclosure (a Blazevox ebook, directly at: http://www.blazevox.org/ebk-jd.pdf for those who have forgotten the English text!), called En Clos in French.

I’m pretty psyched to be included in Poezibao! It’s a site I have been reading for years—& thanks to Jacques & Christophe, I now have some poems out there in French in cyberspace, too!

FYI on POEZIBAO: it hosts hundreds of author bios, reviews of work, listings for forthcoming literary events in Paris as well as other parts of France. Florence Trocme has also conducted debates, posed & responded to poetry-related questions (I was part of those who responded to a questionnaire on women & writing/publishing), & she has written on this site many reviews of readings past, catching authors in photos, capturing at times unexpected first meetings between poets. POEZIBAO is a space to watch: keep an eye out for new poetry book suggestions, or notes on exciting new critical or interview books focused on POETRY & poets! In the early stages of this site, one would run into Florence at practically any event one went to, where she was snapping pics & jotting down notes for postings she made later that same evening! This love of poetry, of the written, read, performed, reflected-upon aspects of the poetic word which Florence Trocmé is committed whole-heartedly to, is rare & energizing.

L'ANTHOLOGIE PERMANENTE: What’s more, Florence runs a daily “Anthologie Permanente” where she posts daily a few poems by an author of her choice. This is where my poems appeared. She said that at first she tried to have one woman, one man rotations, but this has fluctuated over time. However, this attention to gender-equality in publishing, her commitment not only to poetry, but to poetry of all genres, from whatever groups, subgroups, in various styles, from various publishing houses or even nationalities (though translated into French) is needed as we move into the 21st century where so many possibles are possible! Evidently, she is restricted visually by what the website can do with line and space breaks, but she reads widely and does her best to showcase a little over everything every year.

Sign up: if you are interested in receiving her "Anthologie" daily in your email box (f.trocme@poezibao.com)—a nice morning pick-up, starting each day with a different poet’s poems! // Sur simple demande à f.trocme@poezibao.com, recevez chaque jour l'anthologie permanente dans votre boîte aux lettres électronique