GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

June 13, 2013

7pm

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd.,

Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

 christopherjluna@gmail.com

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages,

and uncensored since 2004

With our featured reader, Raul Sanchez:

Raúl Sánchez conducts workshops on The Day of the Dead. He was a featured in the 2011 Burning Word Poetry Festival. An avid collector of poetry books and self-proclaimed “thrift store junkie,” Sanchez volunteers as a DJ for KBCS 91.3 FM on the Saturday music shows Sabor! and Al Lado Latino. His most recent work is the translation of John Burgess’ Punk Poems in his book Graffito and his ardent inaugural collection All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, published by MoonPath Press in Kingston, WA. Filled with poems of cultural identity, familial and personal, civil protest, personal celebration, and passion, his book has been nominated for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry for 2013.

Breath

By Raul Sanchez

At day’s end we try to remain bright

speak colorfully, for words

are like the clothes we wear

we wear them on our tongues

Raul Sanchez at Teotihuacan 2012 

Work by Jolyn Wolfe, Toni Partington, and Jim Martin

Here is the announcement for the show:

Work by Jim Martin

Work by DaBat

Art by Kelly Keigwin, text by Jenney Pauer

Work by DaBat, Kelly Keigwin and Jenney Pauer

Here is our curator’s statement, which was posted in the gallery:

We are very fortunate to be a part of Vancouver’s growing, vibrant arts community. One of the qualities we have noticed about this particular community is that many people work in more than one medium. The Marriage of Poetic Words and Images aims to convey the unique impact that language and image have when presented together in visual art.

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington

Thursday, May 9

7pm

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd.,

Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

printedmattervancouver.com

christopherjluna@gmail.com

 LGBTQ-friendly, all ages,

and uncensored since 2004

Featuring Ralph Salisbury and Ingrid Wendt:

Ralph Salisbury’s three books of fiction and 11 books of poems evoke his Cherokee-Shawnee-Irish-English-American heritage and his life as a questing human in a violent world. His eleventh book of poems, Like Sun in Storm ($12), is just out from Portland’s The Habit of Rainy Nights Press. Recipient of numerous awards, including a Rockefeller/Bellagio fellowship, Salisbury’s book-length memoir, So Far So Good ($20, winner of the 2012 Riverteeth Literary Nonfiction Award), has also just appeared from The University of Nebraska Press. Light Through a Bullet Hole: Poems New and Selected ($20) will also be available at the reading. A Professor Emeritus of the University of Oregon, and former editor-in-chief of Northwest Review, Salisbury and his wife, Ingrid Wendt, live in Eugene.

Ingrid Wendt’s books of poems have won the Oregon Book Award (for Singing the Mozart Requiem), the Editions Prize (for Surgeonfish, $17), and the Yellowglen Award (for The Angle of Sharpest Ascending, $16). Her first book, Moving the House, was chosen for BOA Editions by William Stafford, who also wrote the introduction. A longtime resident of Eugene, she has co-edited From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry and In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts. Her newest book of poems, Evensong ($16), a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Award, offers a host of small epiphanies arising from everyday life: turning points in relationships, insights into our troubled world, and coming to terms with loss.

My Brother’s Poem: Vietnamese War, 1969

You tell me you can not write it

yesterday’s pretty village splinters and in

your aircraft cargo compartment ammunition/rations/med-

icines gone an American lies wrapped in his raincoat

strapped to the floor of that machine generations struggled

to invent and thousands of hours of lives went to create

the boy’s belongings all he could bear

on his back packaged beside him

sunset a shimmer like cathedral glass

a memory the instrument-panel glow

as low as devotional candles showing

in plexiglass monsoon screams past your face

above the controls your own American face

Ralph Salisbury

from Like the Sun in Storm

After a Strong Wind

Other sounds return slowly, the way the first stars

blink on unannounced. Horses snuffling weeds in the meadow.

Warbler patching the thicket with song. Like thoughts

catching up to you. Things you have known all along.

Ingrid Wendt, from Singing the Mozart Requiem

http://www.printedmattervancouver.com
christopherjluna@gmail.com
LGBTQ-friendly, all ages,
and uncensored since 2004

With our featured readers Kelly Keigwin and Sam Mackenzie:

Kelly Keigwin is a professional artist and educator who lives in Vancouver, WA. She works in photography, mixed media collage, and ceramics. Her work draws inspiration from social observation and the human condition. Keigwin has been published in Juxtapoz magazine and is represented in private collections in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. She is exhibited nationally and holds a B.A. from Washington State University. Keigwin is a blogger for PQ Monthly, the co-chair of Equality SW Washington’s Queer Art Project, and co-founder of Love is a Radical Act, an interactive art project. She also created Fear is a 4-Letter Word, an on-going blog/zine project that offers support and positive reinforcement in what can be a negative and lonely world.

From “I’m Still Here” (Fear is a 4-Letter Word #1)
By Kelly Keigwin

“Being “normal” is a myth. It doesn’t exist. There are people out there who will try with every ounce of their being to convince you that normal is good and just and what you should strive to be. “Fit in, don’t stand out! Conform and we will accept you as one of us! Don’t be one of ‘them’, they’re disgusting. We are beautiful, popular, wanted, loved, acceptable.” That is a lie. Everyone has something that makes them different, unique and beautiful, whether it’s on the outside or inside. Even if people choose to ignore it, cover it up or bury it down deep inside because they want to fit in, it’s there. If you take the time to step back and observe people you will see everyone wants to be liked, everyone wants to feel loved. We all try to work around the things that we think others might not like about us, so we can be accepted. I have spent most of my life trying to be what I thought would make me socially acceptable. I see that now. And to be honest, the more I look, the more I do not want to have anything to do with that lie and the people who perpetuate it. It took me stepping back and realizing that I only have one life to live and that I actually like myself as I am to find people who genuinely like me for me.”

Sam MacKenzie is an artist, educator, farmer, zinester, and Vancouver native. She bought her first zine in high school but never even got to read it. She is now an avid proponent of zines and zine culture and has been part of the Portland Zine Symposium for the past seven years. Sam has written six issues of chickeney, a zine about the more rural and domestic aspects of her life (http://chickeney.etsy.com/), and chronic: a story about chronic illness, a perzine about her sleep disorder. She is also in the process of writing another perzine about depression and abuse and would also like to write a zine about her multiple stints on jury duty. Although she still finds it hard to identify as a writer, Sam is proud to have her zines represented by Sweet Candy Distro, Once Upon a Distro, and the Multnomah County Library System.

From “i’m tired of sharing” (chickeney #5)
by Sam Mackenzie

“yes, obviously what we do by farming can be considered unnatural and imposing on nature. no person can leave zero impact. but, as things go, we are pretty kind to the earth.

and i’m tired of it.

my breaking point was the figs. it’s been a few years…several years…since we planted two little fig trees. i know someone with such a gigantic fig tree that she sells extras by the box load. they are gloriously delicious. i want my fig trees to be that big and bountiful someday.”

Two Free Workshops
Saturday, April 13

“The Work” with Christopher Luna at noon
And a zine workshop with Kelly Keigwin and Sam Mackenzie at two

Christopher Luna’s monthly poetry workshop, which usually takes place at Niche Wine and Art Bar, will take place at Cover to Cover Books on Saturday, April 13 so that he can properly introduce Kelly and Sam, who will lead a workshop on writing and publishing zines. Luna likes to play spoken word recordings, read poetry, discuss the poet’s role in the community, and lead the group in four to five writing prompts.

Kelly and Sam will share their experience regarding the production and distribution of zines at 2pm.

Christopher Luna

February 15, 2013

Contact: Elizabeth Madrigal, Clark County Arts Commission, (360) 281-1615,

emadrigal@clarkcountyartscommission.org, Elizabeth.madrigal@gmail.com

Patricia LaCroix, Clark County Arts Commission, (360) 606-7104,

placroix@clarkcountyartscommission.org

Vancouver resident selected first Clark County Poet Laureate

Vancouver, WA – Christopher Luna, a Vancouver poet, visual artist and editor, has been named Clark County’s first Poet Laureate by the Clark County Arts Commission.

As Poet Laureate, Luna may act as a cultural ambassador, composing poems for special events and occasions. His main duty is to promote poetry and literature, nurturing public knowledge and appreciation of the power of words. His work will reflect diverse experiences in Clark County and the Vancouver-Portland metropolitan area.

The public can meet Luna when he is officially installed as Poet Laureate during the commission’s 6:30 p.m. meeting Tuesday, Feb. 26, in the sixth-floor hearing room of the Public Service Center, 1300 Franklin St.

Luna earned a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Boulder, Colo. He serves as a writing consultant and poetry event coordinator for WSU Vancouver’s Writing Center, where he teaches a weekly workshop.

His work has appeared in New York Journal of Books, Poetry Project Newsletter, The Columbian, The Oregonian and Willamette Week. He co-edited Ghost Town Poetry, a collection of poems from a popular open microphone poetry reading series he established in 2004. Luna frequently is a featured reader at bookstores, night clubs, libraries and coffee shops.

For information about the Poet Laureate position, contact Pat LaCroix, chair of the arts commission, at (360) 606-7104. For more information on the arts commission visit www.clarkcountyartscommission.org.

Toni Partington & Christopher Luna, Editors

Photo by Julian Nelson

 Call For Submissions

Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to announce the submission period for Ghost Town Poetry, Volume 2, a poetry anthology to be released in January 2014. 2014 marks the ten-year anniversary of the popular open mic reading series, hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington and founded by Luna. Ghost Town Poetry takes place on the second Thursday of the month at Cover to Cover Books (6300 NE St. James, Suite 104B) in Vancouver, WA. For more information on the bookstore, go to: http://covertocoverbooks.net

We look forward to reading your work.

 Submission Guidelines:

The Stuff You Need To Know:

Poems will be accepted beginning April 1, 2013 through May 12, 2013 at 11:59pm, Pacific Standard Time.

To be considered for the anthology you will have read your work at the poetry series held the second Thursday of each month at Cover To Cover Books in Vancouver, WA prior to the submission deadline of May 12, 2013.

Submissions will be accepted via email only.

Submit a maximum of two (2) poems. Previously published poems may be accepted subject to the discretion of the editors. Indicate the publication name, date, poem title, and publication rights in the body of the submission email.

If one of your poems is accepted for publication, the editors may have suggestions for edits or format changes to prepare the work for publication. Whenever possible the editors will work with the author to review suggested changes. Authors will have the final decision on the edits. The editors are unable to guarantee publication of your work if they feel the edits are necessary and the author disapproves of the changes.

Authors whose work appears in the anthology will receive one copy of the book. Additional copies will be available for purchase. Printed Matter Vancouver retains first rights to pieces published in the collection. From there, rights revert back to the authors.

Authors agree to have their work appear online at printedmattervancouver.com

Poem Format:

• Poem(s) must be in Times New Roman, 12-point font with one-inch margins.
• Include your name, address, phone, and email at the top left of each page.
• Include the poem’s title below your contact information.
• Poems should be single-spaced with one space between stanzas.
• Poems should not exceed 2 pages.
• Poems should be saved as a Microsoft Word Document.
• Save each poem as a separate document (last name+poem title).

What To Email:

• Type “Printed Matter Submission” in the subject line of the Email.
• Include in the body of the Email:
  • The title(s) of your poem(s).
  • Contact information: name, address, email, and phone (home and cell).
  • For previously published poems, indicate the publication name, date, poem title, and whether you own the publication rights.
  • Include each poem(s) as a separate attachment.
  • Include all attachments in one email.

EMAIL SUBMISSIONS BEGINNING APRIL 1, 2013 TO: printedmattervancouver@gmail.com

Printed Matter Vancouver would like to thank the following businesses and individuals for making 2012 another great year for poetry in the ‘Couve: The Catalyst, Everybody’s Music, Leah Jackson (Angst Gallery and Niche Wine and Art Bar), Mint Tea, Moe’s, One World Merchants, Pop Culture, and Urban Eccentric.

We would also like to thank the featured readers and musicians who shared their work with our community in 2012: Jennifer Pratt-Walter, Bret Jorgensen, Lincoln’s Beard, John Sibley Williams, John Burgess, Raul Sanchez, Jenney Pauer, David Matthews, Leah Stenson, Patrick Bocarde, Melissa Sillitoe, A. Molotkov, Ragon Linde, Julene Tripp Weaver, Kristin Roedell, Traci Schatz, Ric Vrana, Jane Ormerod of great weather for MEDIA, Gina Williams, Dan Raphael, Richard Loranger, and Mary Slocum.

In addition, we owe a debt of gratitude to the many poets who have moved and entertained us at the open mic—without your continued participation and support, we would have nothing to celebrate.

Finally, our thanks to Mel Sanders for staying open late once a month and for her undying commitment to local writers.

Bios:

Eileen Davis Elliott works as a poet and visual artist after retiring from a career in mental health and education. She has consistently focused on themes of struggle and redemption of the human spirit in whatever state it finds itself; trying to find personal meaning or while interacting with other souls. She has two books of poetry: Prodigal Cowgirl and the newly released Miles of Pies. Her most current writings have focused on how autism affects families. She is also doing a series of prose poems about life in Mexico, for a chapbook with the draft title Pobrecitos. Her art quilts tell stories about the people who receive them and she hopes they give warmth and comfort. She also likes to feed people and have long, lingering conversations while the dirty dishes wait for later.

“Though the way ahead never did get clear, I guess we made it after all” sings Portland songwriter Matt Meighan, and the experience of miles traveled is easy to hear in his music. Drawing on his years as an activist, journalist, parent and poet, Matt writes tradition-steeped, thought-provoking songs that are at turns personal, political, poignant and funny, infused with a philosophical bent and an audible love of language.

A song collector as well as writer, Matt mixes his originals with songs by fellow songwriters as well as older songs from the folk and blues traditions. His commitments to good writing and “truth-telling” are clear in the songs he chooses and the songs he writes, many of which are performed by other songwriters. He is currently recording his second CD, Long Way ‘Round.

Matt’s engaging, relaxed performance style and fingerstyle acoustic guitar make him an ideal performer for house concerts and similar listening venues. He also performs as a duo, with Sherry Pendarvis on upright bass, and adds a fiddle or mandolin player to perform as a trio.

After earning an MFA in poetry at the Jack Keruoac school of Disembodied Poetics (Naropa University) in Boulder, Colorado, Matt turned his hand to songwriting and became a signifcant part of the Boulder acoustic music scene, organizing monthly songwriter gatherings and hosting numerous songwriter showcases. In 2003 moved to Portland, where he performs regularly, teaches a popular “Songwriting as Truth Telling” class, and hosts the weekly Songwriter Roundup show at Artichoke Music.

Matt began playing songs while still in high school in Chicago in the 1960s. His musical education began at the Old Town School of Folk Music and haunting the blues and jazz clubs of 1960s Chicago. He has since traveled the world with his music, performing in venues and on street corners across the U.S., Australia and Italy, and has regularly brought his songs to the pubs of Ireland over the last 20 years. He and his wife Nancy met at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville Texas, which they attend every year. Since moving to Portland Matt has become both a popular performer and an ardent supporter of the Portland-area acoustic music community.

Photo by Anni Becker

Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to nominate the following poems from Jenney Pauer’s debut collection, Serenity in the Brutal Garden (ISBN-10: 1470132591; ISBN-13: 978-1470132590), for the 2012 Pushcart Prize:  “Ruben” (p. 5); “A White Bed Sheet” (p. 8); “Dreamer” (p. 34); “What You Meant By It” (p. 37); “Chairs” (p. 43); and “Mrs. Donahue” (p. 46)

When we founded the press, Jenney Pauer was at the top of the list of authors who we considered publishing. Since arriving in Vancouver, Jenney has touched the hearts of many in the community with her powerful command of the craft, and astounded us with her breathtaking spoken word performances. Jenney Pauer is a Vancouver treasure, a gracious and humble master of the art of poetry. We are honored to have been able to present the public with her debut.

If you do not yet have a copy of Serenity in the Brutal Garden, please contact Printed Matter Vancouver or visit Cover to Cover Books (http://covertocoverbooks.net) or Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Serenity-Brutal-Garden-Poetry-Jenney/dp/1470132591/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354085384&sr=8-1&keywords=Jenney+Pauer

For more information on the Pushcart Prize, go to: http://www.pushcartprize.com/

Christopher Luna

Toni Partington

Co-Editors

Printed Matter Vancouver

Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B
(St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA
360-993-7777

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com

 With our featured reader, Mary Slocum: Mary was a shipyard electrician with a MSW for 17 years. Now retired, she has time to pursue her theory that she is a reincarnated dog. Mary has been published in Stanza, NW Literary Review, Upper Left Edge, Tradeswomen’s Network Newsletter, Black Cat, Portland Alliance, Unhook, Work and Carcinogenic. She enjoys reading publicly more than publishing and has also appeared with a comedy collective. Her new collection, Greatest Hits: 60 Years of Lookin ($14.95), published by Dancing Moon Press, is also available in e-reader (all four formats). Regular posts and poems can be found at: www.maryslocum.com

“Sixty Years of Lookin offers a panoramic view of life from birth through death, with all its attendant triumph and tragedy. These carefully crafted songs of longing and regret are filled with the gallows humor of those who have been hit hardest by the empty promise of American capitalism. Mary Slocum’s devastating reportage of the minute particulars of relationships, childhood memory, and gender discrimination in the workplace suggests how we might survive loneliness, marriage, and the aging process. The melancholy subject matter is offset by her sharp wit and the pleasure to be found in the plainspoken vernacular of everyday working people. Containing everything from astute comparisons of rural vs. urban lifestyle to maddening depictions of the uphill battles fought by social workers, this astounding collection speaks to us all.” –Christopher Luna, Printed Matter Vancouver publisher and author of Ghost Town, USA 

GHOST TOWN POETRY Open Mic

hosted by Christopher Luna and

Toni Partington

7pm Thursday, November 8, 2012

and every second Thursday

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004

Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B
(St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA

360-993-7777

http://www.printedmattervancouver.com

http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com

With our featured reader, Ric Vrana:

With our featured reader, Ric Vrana: Ric Vrana shares his interpretations of a long and varied working life, inner strivings and doubts, and his reactions to the random slop that gets slung at him with his only dependable defense, poetry. Whether he uses humor, anger, longing or gratitude, he writes of personal challenges amid evocations of geographic places. Place and its meaning are subjects in their own rights, as often as metaphors for the events they host.

Ric’s poems have appeared sporadically over a thirty year period and he has written from Seattle, Tacoma, Portland and now Astoria, where he makes his home. In the last decade he has appeared in Broken Word, the Alberta Street Anthology, Blown Out: Portland’s Indy Poets, Venetian Blind Drunk, and other anthologies, zines, and blogs. He’s published three small chapbooks available in selected local bookstores and has appeared on KBOO’s Talking Earth on several occasions.  Audio and video clips of his readings can be found on the internet with a Google search but why bother, when you can come to hear him live, this month, at Cover to Cover in Vancouver.  C’mon, he’s coming all the way from the coast!