Tonight I finally made it to the weekly French-language poetry slam at Culture Rapide in Belleville. Impressed. Very impressed. Aware that my being impressed counts somewhat less given the difficulty I had in following some of the French poetry.
Of everything I’ve seen in my 2+ months in Paris, this was the first event that really impressed me, that made me want to stay in town just to remain in its orbit.
Why did it take me so long to end up there? The same place also hosts a regular English-language slam, which I visited soon after I arrived. It wasn’t actually bad — just somewhat insipid, more like a poetry reading than the slams I’d come to love in Berlin. So I wasn’t inspired to visit its French sister, at least not before August came and put everything interesting in Paris under wraps.