Visual: Zoé Lauberteaux
Visual: Zoé Lauberteaux
Writing Workshop with Star Finch, poet.
Limited places, registration required: publics@betonsalon.net
In this workshop, we will use a tool familiar to institutions: Easy-to-Read and Understand Language. Easy-to-Read Language is designed to translate complex language into simple language. It makes information clearer and more accessible to everyone—especially people with disabilities, dyslexia, older adults, or those learning a language.
Following in the footsteps of poets who use constraints to generate unexpected and powerful works (Dodie Bellamy, Anne Garréta, Harryette Mullen, Renee Gladman, Bernadette Mayer, kari edwards…), we will explore Easy-to-Read’s Language’s constraints to experiment with a language of radical simplicity, full of rhythms and sounds. We will cut, move, and rearrange words to create texts that are both accessible and unique.
The workshop offers a space to explore a language that is welcoming, addressed to everyone, and free from academic solemnity. A performative language, but of a different kind: non-standard, non-hierarchical, open, and poetic. Something like a crip tongue in spite of language.*
*Easy-to-Read Version :
This workshop uses Easy-to-Read.
Easy-to-Read changes complicated texts into simple texts.
Easy-to-Read helps everyone understand better.
It is very useful for:
- people with disabilities,
- people with dyslexia,
- older people,
- people learning a language.
In this workshop, we will play with the rules of EASY-to-Read.
Like the Oulipo poets, we will write with constraints.
We will:
- cut words,
- move words,
- put words together in new ways.
We will create texts that are simple and original.
Texts that speak to everyone.
The workshop seeks a welcoming language.
A language that is not scary.
A language that does not exclude anyone.
An open, poetic language.
Star Finch
Born in the United States and based in Paris, Star Finch writes and performs weird experimental pornography, at the intersection of theory and poetry. Their literary performances are regularly presented in art institutions in France and internationally (Palais de Tokyo Paris, ICA London, CAPC Bordeaux, Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe). Their ongoing research interests include vomit and dildos, exploring how these materials function as literary technologies. In 2024, They received a doctorate from l’Université Paris 8 in Gender Studies for their dissertation that traced the literary queerfeminsms of Kathy Acker, Hélène Cixous, Violette Leduc, and Audre Lorde. With the collective RER Q, they stage the performance of sexually explicit literary texts. They are the author of the novel Fuck Me Judith (After 8 Books, 2025) and the poetry collection Crache dans ma bouche puis crache dans mon autre bouche [Spit in my mouth then spit in my other mouth] (Les petits matins, 2024). Their other literary projects include Kathy Acker 1971-1975 (Éditions Ismael, 2019), and contributions to Lettres aux jeunes poétesses [Letters to young poets] (l’Arche, 2021) and Kathy Acker: Get Rid of Meaning (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, 2022). With sabrina soyer, they translated the poet Lisa Robertson into French, in Debbie: une épopée [Debbie: An Epic] (Joca Seria, 2021).
Extension of the “Borborygmi” programme, as part of the Cultural Summer organized by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Île-de-France – Ministry of Culture.
