Archives: Events

“Books and Tea” is a monthly meeting for bookworms and tea drinkers. Bring a book you’ve really enjoyed, talk about it and pass it on! The group meets from 2 to 3:30 at “Les Casse-Croûte de Suzy” 3 rue de l’Espine. No need to sign up, just come and enjoy!

The pizza and board games evening is scheduled one Tuesday a month from 6-8 pm. Cost is 7 euros (covers pizza and non-alcoholic drinks, 5 euros for children 12 and under and native English speakers). No reservations necessary, just come and enjoy! Dates for 2016-2017 are Dec 13th, January 17th, February 7th, March 14th, April 4th, May 16th and June 20th.

Love those French restaurants? Feel like you need to speak English more but in a relaxed atmosphere? Join this club which schedules a lunch in a great local restaurant. Click here to send an email to the coordinator for more information and the full schedule.

Looking for that good old Christmas spirit…? Join the members of the English-language Library in Angers for Christmas caroling on Sunday, December 11th. All you need to do is to wear red and green AND WARM clothes (and a red santa hat if you have one!), meet at the library at 2:30 before going out to carol in the streets of Angers. If you would like, bring some baked Christmas treat to share with everybody for when we come back to the library. No need to sign up, just come and sing to your heart’s content! Free and open to the public!

14:30 – meet at the library to warm up the vocal cords

15:00 – 17:00 Christmas carols in town, the library will be locked up at this time

17:00 – Christmas goodies to eat and drink (feel free to bring something)

The next film club event is partnered with the Saturday Reading Group and will be a showing and then discussion of “The Secret Life of Bees” by Sue Monk Kidd.

Set in South Carolina during 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a fourteen year old white girl, Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three racists in town, they escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily finds refuge in their mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna. Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. The Secret Life of Bees is a major literary triumph about the search for love and belonging, a novel that possesses a rare wisdom about life and the power and divinity of the female spirit.

Screening begins at 15:00 sharp. This activity is free of charge for all library members. Please reserve by signing up at the front desk in advance. A discussion in English will follow the film. 

Come and meet the photographer of the exhibit “Dans mes yeux l’Amérique” Michel Durigneux during this special evening open to the public. Free and open to the public.

Treat yourself to an afternoon of a collective reading of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry the Fourth. The activity consists of watching a BBC production on DVD and then reading relative scenes. This is a great activity for lovers of language and fans of the great wit. The activity is free for library members. Please sign up at the front desk.

Come to this Coffee House presentation of the portraits – photos and text – of 48 winemakers of Anjou. Beautifully produced, this is a perfect Christmas gift! Both the photographer, Jean-Yves Bardin and the translator, Bernard Reeves, will be in the library to talk about the project and sign books. Free and open to the public. No need to sign up.

This is a special moment when the community gathers together to talk about everything and anything (…in English of course!) and sips coffee and tea. Coffee House is free and open to all library members. Just drop in, no need to reserve! Coffee house is every Friday except during school holidays.

poésie : usa festival ’16

Double Change, The Poetry Foundation, la Bibliothèque Anglophone d’Angers, la Maison des écrivains et de la littérature d’Angers, and the publishing house Joca Seria invite you to to the festival  ‘Poésie : usa’ with

Tina Darragh

Tina was born in 1950 in Pittsburgh. Tine Darragh took seriously the task of moving the poet’s voice away from the center of the poem, and experimented with language as material in books. Her work has been included in several  L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry anthologies. Her current projects focus on ways to further the notion of “partial authorship” such as opposable dumbs. She lives in Greenbelt, Maryland with poet P. Inman and supports herself by working in a library.

De coin à corner, livre de 26 proses, est un abécédaire fou : chaque lettre correspond à une page du dictionnaire choisie au hasard et dont les mots, par les liens que la poète voit entre eux, génèrent un récit. Table périodique d’éléments verbaux très instables, le livre de Tina Darragh est une proposition d’itinéraire dans les domaines du possible de la langue, un site de rencontres lexicales pour des relations d’une page dont la fraîcheur et l’étrangeté réjouiront madame comme monsieur.

Marcella Durand

Marcella’s books include Deep Eco Pré, a collaboration with Tina Darragh (Little Red Leaves). She has translated Marcel Proust, Nicole Brossard, Eric Giraud and other poets for publications such as Fence and The Collected Poems of Marcel Proust (Penguin 2013). She lives in New York City. For an interview click here.

Dans Le jardin de M., Marcella Durand réinvente l’espace, celui de la ville, celui du langage et du poème. Lire les poèmes de Marcella Durand, c’est, à l’heure d’une cartographie totale du monde, revenir à une appréhension élémentaire de l’espace et du langage. Dans les poèmes de Rayons de l’ombre, cela passe par l’utilisation surprenante, en langue anglaise, de l’alexandrin, comme si la poète américaine, de père français, avait voulu faire rentrer sa langue dans la mesure française, comme pour la faire tenir, l’empêcher de fuir.

Tonya Foster

Tonya is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna, 2015) and co-editor of Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art. Born in Bloomington, Illinois and raised in New Orleans. In a review, Patricia Spears Jones says, ” Foster’s imaginative work glories in language’s ambiguities, discords, emotions and logic. She allows that imaginative thrall to explore race and gender and political dysfunction.” .

La grammaire des os est celle d’une langue qui trébuche pour se ressaisir dans le jeu de haïkus de Tonya Foster. Dans le Harlem du 21^ème siècle, dire et parler, c’est vouloir sentir pour savoir et connaître, saisir le spectre des couleurs, du noir de la peau au rouge du sang. « Ce poème est une ville de visages désertés par l’espoir d’un nous ». Lire cette grammaire, c’est se frayer un passage, se trouver une place et en faire pour les autres sans attendre une invitation qui ne vient pas. Le poème en tient lieu.