E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

France has a history of seeking secular neutrality among its citizens - and a more recent history of violent attacks on its citizens by foreign fighters associated (by themselves and others) with a particular form of fundamentalist religious belief. None of this should permit the sort of scenes that unfolded today in Nice - sadly a recent victim of a horrific mass slaughter - when police officers surrounded a woman on a beach there, and ordered her to remove a piece of clothing she was wearing.  A "Burkini". This is wrong for many reasons, and we here count four: Firstly, France is the home of international fashion.  The very ethos of fashion is that while some styles are in vogue, many outrageous, outre and shocking styles can be worn publically. The bikini itself is, in many ways, a product of the cinematic glamorous Cannes lifestyle that sexually-provactive French culture has long endorsed in its more liberal phases. French fashion also has a disturbing historica...

Bad news for France, Europe, and perhaps, the world - Socialists have won the presidency of France , and the high-energy diminutive characterful  Sarzoky , is history.   Mr   Francois Hollande , now President-elect, has declared himself the enemy of banks, and wants a 75% tax rate in place.  He also opposes the German handling of the Euro-crisis, and seeks to end the austerity measures in France which mirror those that the Tories have adopted in the UK.  Hollande 's victory will also lead to the rise of a far-right alternative in France, which cannot be a good thing - a trend we are seeing tonight in Greece, where the centre cannot hold, and thus more extreme alternatives are gaining public support.

French poet and inventor Jean-Jacques Lapierre with one of his poetry devices The French are Coming!  Building on the avant-garde experimental linguistically unusual other alternative hybrid work of poet-promoters like S.J. Fowle r, and Tom Chivers , the pioneering Paris-based poet and inventor Jean-Jacques Lapierre (above) is bringing his Poesie Trois Menagerie series to London this May, in a deliberate attempt to provoke comparisons to the Futurist visits of almost a century ago.  Lapierre senses a swing to the Euro-text, as he calls it, in London - already home to nearly a million French speakers - and wants to start a cross-chunnel 21st century poetic revolution. In a bizarre mixture of revolutionary France, and Alice in Wonderland, Lapierre's first installation-poem will be Robespierre Through The Looking-Guillotine , in which effigies of Larkin, Ted Hughes , and T.S. Eliot will be decapitated by a rowdy bunch of LangPo reciting executioners.  "Death To T...

Sad news.  The world's greatest bookshop owner, and one of the great expats of all time, big-hearted, eccentric George Whitman , of kilometre zero's Shakespeare & Company, has died, at the lovely age of 98.  I lived in Paris for a few years (2001-2003) and, like thousands of other young writers, knew his generosity.  My Whitman anecdote gives the measure of the man.  One day I came in and introduced myself, in 2002 or so, as a young poet.  Whitman invited me to "a small reading" later that afternoon.  Instead, imagine my surprise when I was asked to open (with a generous ten minutes or so) for Lawrence Ferlinghetti , to an audience of hundreds outside the shop, crowding the pavements.  In the audience was none other than George Plimpton , who I spoke with after.  One of the great memories of my life, and entirely thanks to the splendid wide decency and helpfullness of Whitman, who embodied some of the spirit of his namesake, and enacted al...

Sad news, the British francophile writer, film critic and wit, Gilbert Adair , has died.  The Bertolucci film The Dreamers , was based on his novel.

Quebec writer Robert Smith contributed this obituary notice: Angéline Neveu (1946-2011), a poet and performer, had been active since the sixties in France. She had been one of the eleven ''Enragés'' students at the Université de Nanterre, who had instigated the May 1968 revolution in France, which had culminated in a general strike. She was involved in the Situationniste movement. This was followed by a period during which texts, music and images were entwined through the creation of books, the delivery of public readings and performances, including in the Polyphonix festivals in Europe, in New York City in 1979 and in Quebec City in 1990, as well as numerous reading performances at the Centre Georges-Pompidou, at the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris and performance events organized by Jean Dupuy in New York City in the loft of Georges Maciunas, the founder of Fluxus. From 1979 to 1984, she created and managed the “Unfinitude” colle...

Sad news.   George Solomos , Paris-based editor of little magazine Zero in the heyday of the post-war Left Bank scene, has died.

Sad news.  The 98-year-old French-American artist, Louise Bourgeois has died.

Bastille Day Poetry, Wine & Cheese Evening Oxfam Book and Music shop Tuesday 14th July 7pm Featuring readings by: Barbara Beck David Caddy Jennifer K Dick Brentley Frazer Rufo Quintavalle George Vance & Jonathan Wonham All the wine is being brought from Paris and a selection of cheeses Hosted by Todd Swift our Poet-in-Residence Admission free 91 Marylebone High Street, London, W1 --- Bios of writers appearing RUFO QUINTAVALLE Rufo Quintavalle was born in London, 5th January, 1978. He has an M.A. University Iowa English Literature and a B.A. Oxford University English Literature 2009- Poetry editor Nthposition; 2007- Poetry editor Upstairs at Duroc Make Nothing Happen (AWARD-WINNING Oystercatcher Press, 2009) JONATHAN WONHAM Dr. Jonathan Wonham lives in Norway where he works as a geologist. Jonathan was born in Glasgow in 1965, but spent his childhood in Morpeth, Northumberland. He has been published in the book Poetry Introduction 7 (Faber) as well as numerous magazines and ...

Sad news. The great French singer-composer Alain Bashung has died. As a Montrealer, I have fond memories of his songs and videos, especially "Vertige de l'amour" and "Gaby, O Gaby". His growling voice and Elvis Costello sneer (he actually looked a bit like Bourassa at times) endeared hom to my brother and I instantly.

I will be reading in Paris in a few days, with Claire Potter and Rufo Quintavalle . Details below. Hope to see you there. Berkeley Books of Paris 8 rue Casimir Delavigne 75006 Paris Metro Odeon 7 PM, Monday March 19, 2007

On the subject of the French, I was at a small party near High Street Ken last night to say farewell to some friends heading back soon to France, which is always a sad occasion. However, we had a good time, especially as the evening came to a close, and, all of us in our 30s or very early 40s, danced to tunes from the 80s, on the lovely wooden floor, somewhat more stiffly than when we were younger, bien sur . The French dance Le Rock, of course, that regimented, impressive and faintly ridiculous style of swinging their partners about with impeccable timing that we in the English world associate with Jazz dancing from the 40s. I am tempted to try and compose a paragraph that has numbers 10-100 in it now, but will avoid that compositional urge. Have you seen battles of the iPods yet, at parties? I have. Amateur DJs, drunk on champagne, huddle in gentle conflict, each plugging and unplugging their rival machines, quickly accessing their own files, to inflict a new, more private choice of ...

I will be reading in Paris in March. More about that soon. In the meantime, I am delighted to have appeared on the remarkable poet's site Connaissances , from Jonathan Wonham , with a new poem. Wonham creates images especially to accompany the texts he selects, which is both an honour and a treat. http://connaissances.blogspot.com/

Upstairs at Duroc is one of the best English-language literary magazines to come out of France. Its editor in chief is Barbara Beck , herself a good poet. It's a publication of WICE, based at 20, Boulevard du Montparnasse, 75015 Paris. Issue 8, 2006, is now out, looks great, and features poets such as Mark Leech, Rufo Quintavalle, Lisa Robertson, Mark Terrill and Cecilia Woloch . I'm also in it. To order copies, send a French cheque for 11 Euros to the address above, payable to WICE. If you would like to see more details about the magazine, have a look here: http://www.wice-paris.org/courses/creative/upstairs-duroc.html Deadline for submissions for the next issue is 31 January 2007. More details here: http://www.wice-paris.org/courses/creative/submit.html

Eyewear has long considered innovative Paris-based American poet Michelle Noteboom one of the younger contemporary poets to watch. Over the past five years or so, I have published her work in several anthologies, including Short Fuse and Future Welcome , and at Nthposition . Now, her debut collection Edging is out, with a new press, after winning a competition. Her tour starts soon, so do see link for more information. http://crackedslabbooks.com/noteboom.html

Anyone who sees Derrida , the fairly recent documentary "biography" of Jacques Derrida , is in for an essay on the difference (with or without an a) between voyeurism and homage, the clear and the opaque, and the pretentious and the sublime. Layered and edited to take full advantage of how film can mirror, copy, track, trace and inscribe, the image, the voice, the eyes, the gaze, this particular film shows the nearly-impossible: a person thinking. Or appearing to think. Derrida, as the self who is playing his Other, his image onscreen, is strikingly photogenic - a handsome, tanned, white-haired older man who is like a combination of Einstein and Sartre - sartorial yet slightly eccentric. This is a coincidence the film enjoys - he could have been ugly, and his thought might be the same - but the fact the camera "loves" him allows him to question what love, and cameras, are for. The film constantly implies division, and doubling - sometimes "Jacqui" is a d...