In the nondescript lower reaches of Northern Paris, not quite up the hill to Montmartre, is a scuzzy little bar called Chat Noir (en anglais: Black Cat). It doesn’t serve food though you can bring it in and eat sitting at the long ground-floor bar or one of the few tables there. For a Parisian locale, the wine selection is horrid.
What they do serve, and serve well, is one rickety dark flight of stairs down to the basement where most Monday nights they serve poetry straight up on a half-stage with iffy lighting and a modest audience seated on hard benches. You can bring down your drink; I always do.
Each reading night there is a featured reader. There is always an open mic afterwards. When in France (occasional summers, a couple of weeks or so after each Christmas), I have brought some of my own poems to read at open mic. Last year, my son Matthew (not the son who wrote my most recent poetry book with me; Matthew is today 23) read one of his poems, to my surprise.
The audience all seems to speak English and pretty well, even though for some it is a second or even third language. The audience includes other poets reading, often in English, sometimes in French, sometimes in other languages which are or are not translated. Attendees tend to the younger side. This young group, after Matthew’s reading, scooped him up for the rest of the night and the next, going to other reading venues seemingly more arcane than Chat Noir. (Seems Chat Noir is a big deal in Paris, founded a long time ago in the Spoken Word tradition of reading venues.)
This is a long lead-up to the news: I have been asked to be featured reader at Chat Noir on Monday night, January 11 in the new year 2027. I was asked to send them five poems, which I did from give different sources (for different collections and something new) and they said yes. Putting aside their clear lack of discernment, I am really excited. I may bring along a miner’s hard hat with a light on top in order to make sure I can read my own stuff in the dark bowels of Chat Noir; I may ask someone to sit at the old piano at the back of the stage and play a few notes at appropriate times. But I am stoked.
If you are in Paris on January 11 let me know. If not (I do understand many readers will not happen to be there), but if you know folks in Paris who might be interested, please alert them or link me up with them. I could use some friends down there; I am a bit on the senior side for their usual run of readers though my stuff is sufficiently arcane that I seem to pass muster with the younger crowd…..