Post-Marché de la Poésie

Four exhilarating & exhausting days are over. The Marché de la poésie was exciting as every year — though a slight shadow seems to hang over it, i.e. economic politics (& conditions) may see it disappear, which would be a real shame. Was also sad that old friend Jacques Darras, whose last year as president of the Marché this was, couldn’t be there as he was ill (but is better now).

Below a little gallery of pictures I took — not an activity I like or am any good at (two aspects that should usually complement each other). There’s also a funny video of Serge Pey, Eric Sarner & me doing a  bullish little two-step circulating on FB, as well as a good video of Nicole’s performance whisking crème chantilly & offering communion to the audience in front of her publisher’s stand.

Abdellatif & Jocelyne Laabi — both excellent writers & an immense treat to spend time with talking of poetry, Morocco, politics, poetics, politics, &  poetry again ad infinitum over good food — French or Moroccan.

Paul Stubbs, English poet, & Blandine Longre who together edit Black Herald Press & the magazine, The Black Herald here in Paris. They are the most recent bi-lingual undertaking in this town known for such ventures for more than a century.

The other Luxembourg nomad poet & translator Jean Portante resting beneath Nicole’s “Hemnas de Oo.” We’ll meet up again in 2 weeks in Durango Mexico.

Poet, film-maker, translator Eric Sarner expressing surprise after getting the “Prix A. Ribot” (which rhymes suspiciously with “Haribo,” the name of a well-known commercial sweet) a literary prize the name of which jokingly riffs off the actually bestowed “Aristo(tle”) prize.

Grand old master publisher Jean-Michel Place (specialized in Surrealism, full editions of classical avant-garde magazines & beautiful avant-garde art books)  offering me cherries from his own garden in the South of France.

See you — hopefully! —next year at Place Saint Sulpice in Paris for another installment of the Marché de la Poésie.

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