Dylan Harris

Dylan Harris is a poet and photographer. His collections include antwerp (wurm press) and the smoke (Knives Forks and Spoons Press). He runs Poets Live, an informal poetry night for visiting poets and locals.

1. What initially inspired you to move here or visit?
Gentlemen with open wallets.

2. Earliest Paris memory?
A visit, decades ago, the Eiffel tower, discovering a camera between eye & horrid down switches off my fear of height.

3. Best neighbourhood you’ve ever lived in?
The 18th: it reminds me of Blackheath, for some reason.

4. What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Paris?
Bread from a great boulangerie, cheese to mug a mouse.

5. Sexiest moment you’ve had in Paris?
I’m about ready to seek them out again.

6. What do you hate most about living in Paris?
There’s not enough green. I want trees! Trees! Every street should bathe in green!

7. Who’s your favourite Parisian — be they living or dead, real or fictional?
The great criminal poet Francois Villon.

8. Favourite cinema?
Movies and me disagree.

9. Right bank or left bank? And why?
Right among the poets.

10. Favourite Caviste?
I’ve not explored, unfortunately.

11. Where do you go to escape the city?
I run from stone to stone: London, Antwerp, Dublin, Bremen — and Northamptonshire mud!

12. Where are the best looking girls or boys in Paris and why?
I love the beauty a snap can never show, that a great photographer exposes: the beauty in the eye the eye alone cannot see, the beauty of movement, in personality, in conversation. For me it’s the international poetry community, it’s half the reason I keep myself involved. It’s not earthy, yet Paris makes it seem so.

13. Where do you get your news?
Websites and podcasts from the BBC, VRT, sometimes RTE, sometimes Der Spiegel.

14. Favourite museum?
The Pompidou, but I’m deeply ignorant of too many.

15. Favourite shop?
Shopping is a chore, a hazard to the wallet. What’s your favourite floor to clean?

16. Who’s the most stylish Paris personality?
The new automatic trains on Ligne 1. Well, come on, I *am* an engineer, that hardware’s got intense geek chic.

17. What is your favourite film that is set in Paris?
Neither movies nor me agree.

18. What about Paris most inspires you?
The vibrancy of the arts: the international poetry, the visual arts, the *so* middle class jazz salons.

19. What makes someone a Parisian?
Asking me that is like asking Dick van Dyke to judge a Cockney accent competition.

20. What’s your favourite French word? (Swear words allowed!)
Dentressangle. As in Norbert. RIP Eddie Stobart.