Poetry reading at Shakespeare and Co, Paris 05 Jun 2018

I first visited Paris when I was 13, I brought a romantic watercolour of Paris in the rain, years later I returned again, and it is with pride and delight I tell people I am reading at Shakespeare and Company.

This was my third time. But it was was the start of so much. Everything really. All roads lead back to Sylvia Whitman's faith in me, giving me my first chance in January 2015. Sylvia and her husband David weave magic, they have safeguarded and expanded a sacred place created by her father George Whitman in 1951.

This is where Burroughs started writing Naked Lunch. Where Anais Nin and Allen Ginsberg crashed in a spare beds. It's twinned with City Lights. At City Lights in March I read with Janaka Stucky, and now at Shakespeare and Co I got to share a bill with Salena Godden. I saw Godden and Stucky perform at the 50th anniversary of the Wholly Communion at the Roundhouse in 2015.

Ever since then, when asked which modern poets I most admired it was those two names that always passed my lips. They were the brightest flames in a pretty extraordinary night. Oh yes, and I didn't meet either poet till the night of each reading: Janaka on 20th March half an hour before we did our set at City Lights; and beautiful Salena at around 6:15pm on Tuesday 5th June, upstairs in the kitchen of Shakespeare and Co. She was vivid in her yellow robe, and I recognised the adrenaline in her eyes that was pumping through me.

The poems I performed were predominately from my new books Zoreh.

It was such an experience. The shop was packed, through mics and a PA system our words were amplified throughout the shop, there were seats outside the shop. From my point on stage I could see people standing on the street watching and listening. It was hot and still. I was aware of Salena watching me, her vivid yellow robe in the periphery of my vision.

After my reading, I took a seat next to Mister Godden, Salena's husband, and was able to soak up the poems from her new collection Pesimissim Is For Lightweights. It is a collection so vital to the times we are living in, urgent, funny and poignant. Salena had our largely female audience cheering and weeping in turn. I was on the edge of my seat nodding along to her words that are truth. It was honestly very emotional to sit and sign books after the reading, meeting women who had lived what Salena and I had both written.

One woman in particular asked me to sign her copy of Zoreh, not at the front, but on page 12, on my poem Paper Tigers. She couldn't finish her sentence as she broke down, but her friend told me her name was Alica, echoing the Alice I was trying to reach in that poem. I know I am the luckiest girl in the world, because this thing I am compelled to do, can also be of service too. A teacher came up to us and told us that the group of young girls on the left side of our audience were her students, and asked us to pose with them for this picture.

Thank you to the women that came up to me and said that this was her first ever poetry reading and now she wanted to attend more. Thank you to Salena for your faith in coming to Paris with me, it was a beautiful dream to share it with you. Thank you Sylvia and David, Nathan and Katarina, Adam and Alex.

I can't wait to return.