The City of Culver City will present Speak Easy, an evening of poetry and performance, featuring slam poets Michael Cirelli, Souleymane Diamanka and Rouda and moderator Dominic Thomas, on Friday, May 18, 2012 at 7p.m. in the Mike Balkman Council Chambers at Culver City City Hall. The program is a participating event of “Vis-à-Vis: A Festival with French & American Writers.”

In the past, Speak Easy had been funded by the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, but this year it will receive alternative private funding this year and will not be supported by the City General Fund.

The event is free, but you must call the Cultural Affairs Hotline at (310) 253-5716 to reserve seats.

About the Artists:

Michael Cirelli is the Executive Director of Urban Word NYC, a grassroots non-profit organization that provides free, safe, uncensored, and ongoing writing and performance opportunities for NYC teens. His collection of poetry, “Lobster with Ol’ Dirty Bastard” was a New York Times Book Review independent press best seller. He was featured on season five of Russell Simmons Def Poetry.

 Here’s one of his poems, called “Up In the Treehouse,” originally published in the Segue online literary journal:

Up in the Treehouse

In the summers of our youth

when it was perfectly fine

to drop drawers and swim naked 

in a stream off the Kangamangus

as a troop of Brownies crossed

the wooden bridge, I didn’t 

know “the big deal” till a few years 

later when one of us got a hold

of Playboy’s fluffy tail

and we had to build a treehouse

for those magazines to perch on

in plastic bags like gold fish—

and this was the beginning

of getting into things

like going down to the boatyard

in the winter where the boats

were hibernating on cinderblocks

dreaming of fire hydrants

and we’d break into those boats

and let the sharp liquids in crystalline 

decanters burn our tongues

or we’d steal knives and machetes

and big metal fishing hooks

(that must have been severed pirates’ 

hands), and for some reason we buried 

them behind my mema’s house

hoping they would grow 

into the sharp warriors of our dreams.

Souleymane Diamanka was born in Senegal and grew up in France. Diamanka has worked with John Banzaï and Grand Corps Malade and has written material for the popular neo-soul band, Les Nubians. Diamanka is a member of the creative collective ECHOS, a collection of French and American urban poets. Here's a video clip featuring Diamanka. It's in French, but it'll give you a good idea of his Senegalese flavor.

Rouda was born and raised in Paris suburbs. He is one of the most famous slam poets in France. A member of “129H”—the first French slam poetry crew—he released his first album “Musique des Lettres” in 2007. Here's a clip of him performing, also in French.

Other Vis-à-Vis events will occur on May 19 in Culver City at the Ivy Substation and include readings and discussions on “French Theory in America & French Theory in France: The Semiotext(e) Experience”, “Hollywood and Fame through a French Lens”, and “City of Lights, City of Noir.” Vis-à-Vis is presented in association with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States along with the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies, the UCLA Center for the Study of Global France, PEN Center USA, and the Institut Français in Paris.