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The Live Poets Society

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The Live Poets Society has regular evenings in the Highlander Pub to read poetry. At most of the readings there is a selection of three poets and they will normally read two sets each of around fifteen minutes. All are welcome at any of the readings. There is currently a donation requested of 4€ for attendance. Keep your eye on the message board and the events pages for upcoming events by the poets.

Here is a listing of this Society's activities and and review comments from our readers and the message board:

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Monday January 17 2005 at The Highlander

Poets featured: Joe Ross, Elizabeth Venant, Jonathan Wonham

PFC Review by Burbage

Joe Ross: Joe Ross is an impressively published American poet and writer.
His poetry was well presented, although at times he felt that the presentation benefited from considerable pace. Sometimes I felt he rattled through the poems a little bit too quickly. However, this presentation style does produce an interesting effect. His imagery, when he gets going, is something a little like a rapid slide-show in the mind. My problem with the pace was that sometimes these slides came out blurred or back-to-front. Perhaps that was his intention as he apologised in advance to the weaker anglophones in the audience. It was certainly an interesting experience. His themes concentrated on popular culture, social commentary, love, relationships, sex and fantasised sex. All in all, with your mind jumping around as you follow the images you can lean back and get lost in the show. Very enjoyable too.

Jonathan Wonham: Jonathan is a geological English poet.
As Jonathan pointed out to us, the poetic genres of geology and the petroleum industry are oft ignored. I'm tempted to say, after his reading, that that is possibly as it should be. To be fair though, Jonathan's poetry used some metaphor from his own experience which is seldom used otherwise. The ideas of erosion and sedimentation in his poems worked to some extent. His poetry was basically a series free-structure narratives of his own experiences. His themes ranged from his dislike of smoking (is he reformed I wonder?) to hopelessness derived from his images of the world recycling until it all ends up as the type of rock he studies in his real life. I felt that there should have been more to Jonathan's poems. For example, one which concerned land birds which get lost on oil rigs cried out, in my mind, for something that pointed to the unnaturalness of a rig that also applies to the men on it: suspended eighty feet in the air a hundred miles from the nearest land. Perhaps he left this to our own imagination, but I felt that his themes and metaphors were never developed to their fullest extent. On the whole though, the audience seemed pleased, and they certainly got something different.

Elizabeth Venant: Elizabeth is an American and Naturalised French journalist and poet.
Elizabeth has a style all of her own. Her reading concentrated on her conversations with people (gang members, parents, lovers) from the gang dominated neighbourhoods of America. She described the poetry as giving a voice, seldom heard, to the people that she encountered, and in many ways, this is precisely what her poetry consisted of. She used the vernacular of her subjects and the stories that came through (of necessity, narrative) were tragic, pathetic, sometimes heart-warming. Without question the content of her reading was interesting and the emotional response of the audience was considerable. The only question I have is whether this is poetry, rather than a stylistic journalism. My view is that it is the latter, since there didn't seem to be any attempt to develop the poetry beyond the words of the inmates of these neighbourhoods. In effect, they wrote the poetry without intention to do so, and Elizabeth reports it. This is not to say it wasn't entertaining and that it doesn't deserve a place in the Live Poets Society readings. While poetry can stretch to abstraction that becomes almost meaningless, there is certainly no reason for it not to stretch towards reality to the point of being almost reportage. Interestingly, in the second set, when the poets read a second time, both Ross and Wonhom read poetry of a similar nature. That of Ross was a better example to me of the poetic art, since it took something that was completely meaningless outside its context (football commentators), and placed it in a poetic frame that allowed a different sense of the words. However, I wondered whether the appearance of these two poems was a response to Elizabeth's style? Rivalry amongst poets? They'll have daggers before them before we know it.

In general though, the evening was full of the sort of meat we've come to expect from the LPS. There were three very different styles on show and it is of course a matter of subjective opinion as to the merits of a particular style. Did you go to this reading? What did you think? PFC is a right-to-reply forum. Send us your comments, we'd love to publish them here.

Comments from our readers:
If you wish to add a comment, use the form at the bottom of this page.

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Monday November 22 2004 at The Highlander

Poets featured: Micheal Lynch, George Vance, Vivienne Vermes

Comments from our readers:
If you wish to add a comment, use the form at the bottom of this page.

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Monday October 18th 2004 at the Highlander

Poets featured: John Kliphan, Lisa Pasold, Nina Zivancevic

Comments from our readers:
If you wish to add a comment, use the form at the bottom of this page.

I thought it was a great reading. The Serbian poet, whose name we can neither spell nor pronounce, was witty and fun, the Canadian poet absorbing and as always, JK gave a very nice performance. It was one of the most enjoyable readings I've been to because I liked all of the readers. Often I'll like one or two, but rarely all three (as you may have noticed in gowaters critique of the last reading).
In general, John has a talent for bringing different styles together in one reading so there's something for everyone. I encourage those of you in Paris to come to one. They happen every month except July and August.
Tschanz

Another great night out for me... I wish I'd started going earlier....
I am with Tschanz that this was outstanding in that I enjoyed everyone equally, if differently... but as Winnie the Pooh would say Im just a weak minded bear!
Gowator

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20th September 2004 at the Highlander:

Poets featured: Amy Hollowell, Jennifer Huxta, Gerald Mangan

Comments from our readers:
If you wish to add a comment, use the form at the bottom of this page.

I went to the Poetry reading last night and I must say that I really enjoyed it (as I always do!)
One of the poets, Gerald Mangan, was truly funny and interesting. The second one, Jennifer Huxta, I really liked because it was a bit more abstract but still reachable - so to speak. the last one, Amy Holloway was a bit too far out for me. Still I enjoyed myself with the others who came along... who will probably go more into detail about the last poet who made us all giggle like school boys (shame on us!)
Gorsebush Pixie

This was very good fun and not my normal type of night out.
I have to admit being a bit of a poetry luddite but Gerald Mangan packs enough punch to pull my luddite ass to see him again.
Jennifer Huxta benefited from me being thouroughly enthralled by Geralds's oratory and since I was sitting near the front and already awakened by Gerald I enjoyed her prose immensely.
I must make a mental note to myself. I would have missed enjoying this perhaps if I had not been in the right mood. Jennifer herself is very softly spoken and works as a photographer. She came with her own fan club of 'snappers'... who were considerate enough to take moody shots on high speed film rather than use a flash. Perhaps we can get some photo's here? As a reminder the 'silent' shutter on the Nikon is designed to allow wildlife photo's without disturbing the lioness and getting the photographer eaten. It is 'whisper quiet' but still louder than Jennifers delivery....
This really is a shame... because what she had to say was beautiful, moving and articulate but for those at the back it must have been like peering at a painting through stained glass. Being fair the Highlander 'step' doesnt make things easy..to high and the delivery is made at the arch... This is apparently Jennifer's first reading after returning to Paris so I feel comfortable to predict her confidence should build and the volume with it.
I have to confess not being educated enough in poetry to enjoy whatever it was that Amy Holloway did. Someone remarked on Dr. Suess and I found it distinctly Sesame streetesque in its repetiton and seemingly (to me) random placement of adjectorial forms of words in long strings.
Amy herself likened it to Picasso (I think).. I am not educated enough fine arts wise to 'understand' Picasso either so it is probably a good comparison. In other words Amy's poetry is a little beyond my ability to understand and way beyond my ability to critique. However it would in my opinion only be properly appreciated by poetry officianados...
Back to Gerald who's performance hopped between provokingly emotional and outragously funny. His choice of readings seemed somewhat dynamically chosen and I doubt I was the only one trying to hold back tears... Within a single reading he had me wanting to cry from laughter then embarrassment over his mothers attic cache of his fathers 'things' (of what we were only led to believe) and frustration over the death of Fife. The latter it seemed being provoked as a response to Jennifers elegy of a Pennsylvanian churchyard over a underground coal fire where she rested her head upon the lap of Earth ... or at the very least provided a fitting epitaph for the environmental disaster.
Gowator

I was there as well. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Gerald was certainly the more entertaining of the three, however I thought that Amy and Jennifer provided plenty for us to talk about afterwards, so they at least made us think. Somehow I thought that Amy's stuff was intended to be more tongue in cheek, but with an audience that seemed to be in a trance, and her deadpan delivery, I wasn't entirely sure.
Burbage

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General Comments on the Live Poets Society
If you wish to add a comment, use the form at the bottom of this page.

I am always interested to hear of readings in Paris, as I have read there myself. I would, however, recommend that readers look outside the ex-pat circle, try to find poets writing in French, try to find readings of poetry in French and find out what the Parisian writers are doing and learn from them when and if one can.
Fred Johnston

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