Month: April 2012

Printed Matter Vancouver author Jenney Pauer to read from Serenity in the Brutal Garden at the Figures of Speech Reading Series in Portland May 15

April 28, 2012
Printed Matter Vancouver is happy to share the following announcement from Figures of Speech co-host Steve Williams:
Our Next Event

Join us for another passionate evening of poetry at In Other Words (http://inotherwords.org/events), 14 NE Killingsworth, Portland, 7 p.m. on May 15th. Stephanie Lenox and Jenney Pauer are going to bring their words to life just for you. And to make sure you enjoy the event, we’ll provide Open Mic, poetry prompts, broadsides both present and past, and of course Cookies. See you all soon.

Stephanie Lenox lives in Salem, Oregon, with her husband and two daughters. She teaches poetry at Willamette University and edits the literary journal Blood Orange Review. She is the author of The Heart That Lies Outside the Body, an award-winning poetry chapbook published by Slapering Hol Press in 2007. Her first full-length poetry collection Congress of Strange People is forthcoming from Airlie Press in fall 2012. Her work has appeared widely in literary journals and has been honored with fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Oregon Arts Commission. Her website is www.stephanielenox.com.

Stephanie Lenox
Photo credit: Sabina Samiee / Oregon Arts Commission
Jenney Pauer is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, where she studied theater and English literature. After serving four years in the U.S. Army as a Korean linguist, she obtained a Secondary English Education degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before moving to the Pacific Northwest with her dog and cat in 2008, she taught high school English along the border of Arizona and Mexico. Recently, Jenney co-wrote a short film, Nico’s Sampaguita, which was accepted into the 27th Annual Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles, and is soon to be released by Sacred Fire Films in San Francisco, CA.

Jenney Pauer

by Anna Shogren

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC featuring David Matthews Thursday, May 10, 2012

April 20, 2012

CORRECTION: Due to circumstances beyond his control, Ric Vrana will be unable to attend May’s Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. His friend David Matthews will take his place. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Printed Matter Vancouver co-founders Toni Partington and Christopher Luna look forward to welcoming Ric Vrana back to the series as our featured reader for November of this year.  

GHOST TOWN POETRY Open Mic

hosted by Christopher Luna and

Toni Partington

7pm Thursday, May 10, 2012

and every second Thursday

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://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com

With our featured reader, David Matthews: David Matthews is a native of the South Carolina Midlands, poet, runner, and unaffiliated intellectual who began writing in high school. He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in philosophy. Romantic vision and sense of himself as poet led to the dubious decision to forsake pursuit of an academic career. One day Matthews found himself in Atlanta at the birth of the Little 5 Points arts scene and lingered there for twenty years. In 1998 he came to Portland, Oregon. His poems and essays have appeared in magazines, anthologies, and poetry blogs. He is author of two chapbooks, Notes to One Who Is Far from Here (2003) and A Portable Bohemia (2008), and several unpublished novels. His chapbooks will be available for sale at this month’s reading for five dollars each.

“Matthews heaves his heart against the bulwarks, sets his siege engines of verse a-going into the fathomless ludicrous nonsensical void.”—Wade Dinius

His blog House Red can be found on the website David Matthews Man of Letters (www.matthewsmanofletters.com).

The Unspoken Language by David Matthews

la Tour Eiffel

Apollinaire

triangles numbers consonants

naked Chagall paints

Russian soul novabright with Paris light

horses graze on blue rooftops

a wingèd fish embraces a clock

the man with one green hand plays a red violin

angel candle dream

nude on a couch and Christ on a cross

oh but what color Marc is the color of the spirit?

which letters belong to the unspoken language of love?

CORRECTION: David Matthews to replace Ric Vrana as the featured reader for GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC May 10, 2012

April 18, 2012

CORRECTION: Due to circumstances beyond his control, Ric Vrana will be unable to attend May’s Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. His friend David Matthews will take his place, and Ric’s reading will be postponed until November. More information to follow. Christopher Luna, co-host and founder.  

GHOST TOWN POETRY Open Mic

hosted by Christopher Luna and

Toni Partington

7pm Thursday, May 10, 2012

and every second Thursday

Cover to Cover Books

6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B

(St. James & Minnehaha)

Vancouver, WA

360-993-7777

all ages and uncensored since 2004

http://christopherluna-poetry.blogspot.com

 With our featured reader, Ric Vrana:

Ric Vrana appears regularly in numerous venues and open mics in the Portland and Vancouver poetry scene. His early days of stand-up poetry happened in Seattle where he found himself at the beginning of the long running Red Sky Poetry Theater in the early 1980s. But he fell in with a bad crowd, and after a long slog through graduate school worked as a professor in Portland.

After some disagreeable business with the dean, he found himself a job as a planner, and, upon being called back up to be an adjunct in another part of the university, continues to teach part time in the urban planning program. His writing is infused with the perspective of the geographer, the cartographer, and the planner. He believes place is the connection between where he is and who he is. He writes about this, thinks about this, dreams about this.

Poems by Ric Vrana have appeared in Duwamish Review, Kent Popular Press, Broken Word: The Alberta Street Anthology, Volume 2, Blown Out: Portland’s Indie Poets, and Venetian Blind Drunk. He is a regular contributor to the Three Friends Caffeinated Art Poetry readings in Portland. He has twice been published by the weekly on-line zone, “Work,” and has a poem and recorded reading forthcoming in OccuPoetry.org. Ric’s three chapbooks will be available at the reading for five dollars each or three for twelve: Brain Screams (2010); Postales desde Costa Rica (2011); and Semi-Ambivalent Middle Aged Male Lament #25 (2011).

From “Brain Screams”

Brain screams, primordial

dreams dancing

that white line between

northbound and south city

bus sounds and some

Greyhounds running

through clouds of particulates.

Walking now moving

behind ironrailed fences

in citypark gardens

couples everywhere, people in pairs

people who stare

at me, alone looking skyward

at rubber sheathed wires

carrying unheard messages

sagging in the middle of their span.

How Alone I’ve Grown

not even owned

by a telephone!

Face feeling taught

as the strain of grief being deep

from another night’s empty empty sleep

is this morning disgusted and eagerly seeks

the soft touch and voice of

some woman.

Printed Matter Vancouver presents Serenity in the Brutal Garden, the debut collection by Vancouver poet Jenney Pauer

April 12, 2012

Printed Matter Vancouver editors Toni Partington and Christopher Luna are proud to announce the publication of Jenney Pauer’s first book of poetry, Serenity in the Brutal Garden. This book of finely crafted, poignant poetry packs the same emotional punch that Vancouver, WA has come to expect from her spoken word performances.  As Northwest spoken word legend Jack McCarthy comments, ” If George Eliot were alive today and writing poetry, she would sound a lot like Jenney Pauer. There is an unforced elegance in virtually every line she writes. My immediate response is to stand back and salute.”

Printed Matter Vancouver nominated Jenney Pauer’s poem “Relational Aggression,” which appears in the Ghost Town Poetry anthology (http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Town-Poetry-2004-2010-Anthology/dp/1461075114/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317767068&sr=1-1#reader_1461075114), for the 2012 Pushcart Prize.

CELEBRATE NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

with a book launch party for Jenney Pauer’s

SERENITY IN THE BRUTAL GARDEN

Edited by Toni Partington and Christopher Luna

for Printed Matter Vancouver

Book cover photo: Anni Becker

Book cover design: Toni Partington

GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington
all ages and uncensored since 2004

7pm Thursday, April 12, 2012
and every second Thursday

Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B
(St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA
360-993-7777
christopherjluna@gmail.com
http://www.printedmattervancouver.com

Jenney Pauer

Photo by Anna Shogren

Jenney Pauer is a graduate of Southern Methodist University, where she studied theater and English literature. After serving four years in the United States Army as a Korean linguist, she obtained a Secondary English Education degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before moving to the Pacific Northwest with her dog and cat in 2008, she taught high school English along the border of Arizona and Mexico. Recently, Jenney co-wrote a short film, Nico’s Sampaguita, accepted into the 27th Annual Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles, and soon to be released by Sacred Fire Films in San Francisco, California. This is her first book.