Printed Matter Vancouver (PMV) provides writing and editing services and coaching to poets and prose writers who want support and straight talk. PMV provides a small press service. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Grief Rites Readers Series – March 6, 2017
Monday, March 6 at 7 PM – 10 PM
Post 134
2104 NE Alberta St, Portland, Oregon 97211
A monthly storytelling showcase about grief, loss and love. Gather in community with others who share grief in all forms and manifestations. Come ready to cry, laugh, listen and hold space for yourself and others. Trigger warning, because Grief. Content not edited for language or topic.
Doors open at 7pm, Readings begin at 7:30pm
Free admission! Full Bar!
Please consider bringing canned goods or cold weather clothing/blankets to donate to the Post 134 food & clothing pantry, which serves local veterans, homeless and anyone in need.
Storytellers for March 6…
Daniel Elder
Sarah McKay
Ravyn Stanfield
Asha Dore
Nicole Ausmus
Amy Findling
Toni Partington
Tiffany Burba
Melissa Dodson
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Featuring Sam Roxas-Chua
Sam Roxas-Chua is a poet and visual artist from Eugene, Oregon. His poetry has been described as “tidal,” and he has been called “a man who can take any kind of physical material and transform them into art.” According to poet Dorianne Laux, “Like Jack Gilbert before him, Roxas-Chua reaches beyond the imagery and emotions we expect—creating his own universe, logic, and definitions of the beautiful.” His first book, Fawn Language, was published by Tebot Bach in 2013 and his current manuscript, Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, is forthcoming from Lithic Press. His poems have appeared in various journals including Narrative, december Magazine, and Cream City Review. His collection of poems, Diary of Collected Summers, won the first place award in the 7th Annual Missouri Review Audio Competition in poetry. Most recently he appeared in a live broadcast of Dear Sugar Radio at the Aladdin Theater in support of #writersresist. He is the owner of The Poetry Loft, a small business dedicated to community writing workshops. He holds an MFA from Pacific University.
Angst Gallery showcases cultural events including art shows, musical performances, book launch parties, classes, workshops, and the monthly Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. All art forms are valued. More than just a place to show art, Angst Gallery is also a safe space for community discussion, where all people are respected for who they are. We donate the use of the space to organizations that work for human rights and progressive social change such as Planned Parenthood, the YMCA/YWCA, Cascade AIDS Project, and the NAACP.
Tiffany Burba will be reading from Meet Me Where I Left You, her debut volume from Printed Matter Vancouver, at two readings in Portland in the coming months. Tiffany’s reading in March will also feature Printed Matter Vancouver Publisher/Editor Toni Partington. Please come out to support Tiffany and pick up a copy of her book.
Tiffany Burba, Leah Noble Davidson, and Lynn Knapp
MEET ME WHERE I LEFT YOU, the debut collection of poetry and short prose by Tiffany Burba, captures her real and imagined New York City adventures of love, lust, museums, jazz, food, and running in Central Park. She has an amazing love affair with the City and its inhabitants stretching from Brooklyn to Queens, the Bronx to Manhattan, and all points between. Living on whiskey kisses, a subway pass, and everything from pizza to soup dumplings, Burba fills and breaks her heart and ours along the way. Meet Me Where I Left You explores her arrivals and departures, her dreams of leaving Pacific Northwest forests for the taxi rides and street grime of New York City, her love of family and friends, and her unashamed quest for passion. (Published by Printed Matter Vancouver)
DOOR explores one of the oldest words in the human language in a way that only Leah Noble Davidson can do. Braking the word into four co-existing story lines, Davidson canvases the meaning of the word “door” through hard science, relationships, psychology, and dissected language itself. The book is not merely a collection of poems, but an experience in and of itself, wherein the reader falls through doors within doors at every turn. Built to be read over and over again, DOOR is riddled with quotes and inserts, footnotes, and hidden patterns that hold-up an oddly relatable and honest perspective of the world as we know it. (Published by University of Hell Press)
GIVING GROUND pulses with traffic and teems with life, leading us through tangled streets, intertwined lives. We find a place of overgrown gardens, alleys in bloom, pheasants in flight, rabbits, stray cats, and Spanish love songs, a place where the ordinary appears in an extraordinary light. With deft narrative strokes, Giving Ground reveals a place and its people, lives balanced on the shifting ground of language and culture. Like the place, Lynn Knapp’s poems are wry, real, and poignant. (Published by The Poetry Box®)
A monthly storytelling showcase about grief, loss and love. Gather in community with others who share grief in all forms and manifestations. Come ready to cry, laugh, listen and hold space for yourself and others. Trigger warning, because Grief. Content not edited for language or topic.
Doors open at 7pm, Readings begin at 7:30pm
Free admission! Full Bar!
Please consider bringing canned goods or cold weather clothing/blankets to donate to the Post 134 food & clothing pantry, which serves local veterans, homeless and anyone in need.
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Featuring Laura LeHew and R.R. Seitz
Laura LeHew’s collections include Becoming (Another New Calligraphy), Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press), It’s Always Night, It Always Rains, (Winterhawk Press) and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press). Laura received her MFA from CCA. She edits a small press called Uttered Chaos. Laura always thought she’d be an astronaut. For more information, visit http://www.lauralehew.com/.
R.R. Seitz writes from the place of decisions made by an eighteen-year-old that carry forward, day-by-day, to the present. His 2006 book Right Here Right Now is in its third printing and made its way to odd places outside the U.S., including Southeast Asia. He has been featured around at various readings throughout the Northwest for 15 years. And yes, it is true, he has no letters behind his name.
Symposium by Laura LeHew
He brings me poison
words tormented love separation
a withered bouquet woven
with absinth wormwood
abandonment boredom regret
starry anemones delicate asphodels prickly
burdock the seeming happy amethyst and canary carnations
screaming antipathy and disdain
an untranslatable orange lily
whispering hatred against a pale vase
vain dream-like clusters of hydrangeas
jealous lemon hyacinths lost
in the sorrow of their vivid violet sisters
and
a forsaken single blood red tulip—the perfect suitor
Please join us as we launch the third season of Poetry Moves with a reading featuring some of the poets whose work will appear on C-Tran buses beginning in January, as well as Washington State Poet Laureate Tod Marshall and Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna. This family-friendly event includes readings by the winners of this season’s contest.
Poem bus cards from all three seasons of Poetry Moves will be available for sale for $20 each. All proceeds will go toward funding the program.
Printed Matter Vancouver Publishers Christopher Luna and Toni Partington congratulate the winners of the contest for the third season of Poetry Moves, sponsored by Printed Matter Vancouver, Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna, Arts of Clark County, and C-Tran. The following poems will appear on C-Tran buses from January-June 2017:
“Joy” by Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados
“A Long Ago Memory of Calmer Times” by Bruce Hall
“Subsequent Layers of Existence” by Bill Lucking
“Why We Don’t Belong Here (excerpt)” by Livia Montana
“Hope, embossed” by Gwendolyn Morgan
“Eulogies Are for the Living” by Angeline Nguyen
“Just Breathe” by Bridget Nutting
“Calling” by Jennifer Pratt-Walter
“Camilla” by Alex Vigue
“how to love (excerpt)” by Desiree Wright
Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Washington State Poet Laureate Tod Marshall will also have one poem each on the buses. Luna’s poem is entitled “pavement pastoral” and Marshall’s poem is entitled from “With Apologies to Andre Breton.” Christopher is the first poet laureate for Clark County; the Clark County Arts Commission recently extended his term through the end of 2019.
Unfortunately, Bridget Nutting passed away before we could inform her that her poem had been chosen. We dedicate phase three of Poetry Moves to her memory, and share our deepest condolences with her family. We have also invited Bridget’s family to be with us at the launch, where her poem will be read aloud. Please visit her family’s GoFundMe page to donate to a special fund to help her husband Dave cover the cost of the funeral, medical bills, and lost wages during her long illness: https://www.gofundme.com/2t8ccc3c
Poetry Moves judges Partington and Luna would like to thank everyone who submitted to the contest. We are also very grateful to Karen Madsen of Arts of Clark County, Graphic Designer Cameron Suttles, and C-Tran for their hard work and support.
[IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to icy conditions, this month’s Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic has been postponed until January 19. Please help us share this news, and stay safe.]
Jen Coleman is the author of Psalms for Dogs and Sorcerers from Trembling Pillow Press, winner of the 2013 Bob Kaufman Book Prize selected by poet Dara Wier, and We Denizens from Furniture Press in 2016. Originally from Minnesota, Jen received her BA from Beloit College and MFA from George Mason University in Virginia. She spent eight years in New York, where she co-edited the journal POM2. She now lives in Portland, OR. Coleman’s set will include one poem accompanied by drummer and songwriter Cat Minor.
Let’s Be Tarsiers by Jen Coleman
It’s too cruel to be a bloody human.
Let’s be a boom-slang, viper or hippo.
Let’s be tarsiers born with fur and eyeballs
big as our brains. Let’s have the long, long feet.
Let me call you tarsier like the long long
bones in your feet. Let me be a tarsier
and balance eye with eye and stay silent.
Take your third tarsier finger and touch my
third finger as long as your upper arm.
Touch your two tarsier toes to my two toes.
Eat bugs and lizards and know me, tarsier
As I know you, tarsier, feasting on bats.
Be awake in the night with me, tarsier,
and leap, and be quite quiet and quite shy.
Mike G: I’ve been writing for my sanity for quite some time now. It’s the most fun, and the most serious thing I do. For me, performing is the public celebration of this sanity. Now and then I’ve read my poems on KBOO radio. Now and then my poems get published. To say it another way: I oozed from the womb in Michigan with hardly more life than a manikin, then the Muse infused me with madness, inspired my wordplay of rage and sadness, or sometimes funny, so it’s said; I’ll clown and rant until i’m dead.
Mike G reads at Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic (photo by Tiffany Burba)
After the plague of boils Job scalded his secret patience formula upon my soul. That’s me lounging on the rotting log spitting a protest melody into the unwashed harmonica. The cold sun is a kind of food. I watch the leaves eat. Eyes fierce and blue in the whiteout blizzard. That’s me, the keeper of memory, not buried yet, heart still beating.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM CHRISTOPHER LUNA: While I hate to do this, I am going to have to call off tonight’s reading. I just ventured out, and it does not seem safe to drive right now. I don’t imagine that the roads will be much better at 6pm. Please check Facebook and printedmattervancouver.com for updates on when we will reschedule Mike G and Rob Katsuno’s featured reading.
I think that this is the first time I’ve canceled the event due to weather in our history. I know that this is disappointing, but I would feel terrible if anyone got hurt while traveling to Ghost Town.
Stay warm, stay safe, and please do what you can to help us inform everyone that we will not be gathering at Angst tonight.
Gratefully,
Christopher Luna
GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna
7 pm Thursday, December 8
Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7
Angst Gallery 1015 Main Street Vancouver, WA 98660 angstgallery.com
Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street
Sound provided by Briz Loan & Guitar: http://briz.us/ LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Featuring Mike G and Rob Katsuno
Mike G: I’ve been writing for my sanity for quite some time now. It’s the most fun, and the most serious thing I do. For me, performing is the public celebration of this sanity. Now and then I’ve read my poems on KBOO radio. Now and then my poems get published. To say it another way: I oozed from the womb in Michigan with hardly more life than a manikin, then the Muse infused me with madness, inspired my wordplay of rage and sadness, or sometimes funny, so it’s said; I’ll clown and rant until i’m dead.
After the plague of boils Job scalded his secret patience formula upon my soul. That’s me lounging on the rotting log spitting a protest melody into the unwashed harmonica. The cold sun is a kind of food. I watch the leaves eat. Eyes fierce and blue in the whiteout blizzard. That’s me, the keeper of memory, not buried yet, heart still beating.
Rob Katsuno has been employed as a Boeing jet design engineer, a Mitsubishi Joint Venture Broker, a Morgan Stanley Investment Banker in NY and Tokyo. He holds an MBA from UCLA and currently works as a Ameriprise Financial Advisor. In 2011 he received third place in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow Writing Contest. He is also a talented performer who has appeared at BackfencePDX and United Solo, America’s largest solo performance festival in Theatre Row, NY. For more information about rob, visit robkatsuno.com
Printed Matter Vancouver Publishers Christopher Luna and Toni Partington are proud to announce the winners of the third phase of Poetry Moves, sponsored by Printed Matter Vancouver, Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna, Arts of Clark County, and C-Tran. The following poems will appear on C-Tran buses from January-June 2017:
“Joy” by Cherish DesRochers-Vafeados
“A Long Ago Memory of Calmer Times” by Bruce Hall
“Subsequent Layers of Existence” by Bill Lucking
“Why We Don’t Belong Here (excerpt)” by Livia Montana
“Hope, embossed” by Gwendolyn Morgan
“Eulogies Are for the Living” by Angeline Nguyen
“Just Breathe” by Bridget Nutting
“Calling” by Jennifer Pratt-Walter
“Camilla” by Alex Vigue
“how to love (excerpt)” by Desiree Wright
Unfortunately, Bridget Nutting passed away before we could inform her that her poem had been chosen. We dedicate phase three of Poetry Moves to her memory, and share our deepest condolences with her family. Please visit her family’s GoFundMe page to donate to a special fund to help her husband Dave cover the cost of the funeral, medical bills, and lost wages during her long illness: https://www.gofundme.com/2t8ccc3c.
Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna and Washington State Poet Laureate Tod Marshall will also have one poem each on the buses. Luna’s poem is entitled “pavement pastoral” and Marshall’s poem is entitled from “With Apologies to Andre Breton.” Christopher is the first poet laureate for Clark County; the Clark County Arts Commission recently extended his term for the third time. He will remain in the position through the end of 2019.
Poetry Moves judges Partington and Luna would like to thank everyone who submitted to the contest. We are also very grateful to Karen Madsen of Arts of Clark County, Graphic Designer Cameron Suttles, and C-Tran for their hard work and support.
There will be a reading to celebrate the winners at the Vancouver Community Library on Sunday, January 15, 2017. Previous channel cards from the first two phases of the programs will be available for sale at the event. All proceeds from these sales will go toward funding the Poetry Moves program.
LGBTQ-FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004 angstgallery.com
Featuring Naomi Fast, author of
Portland Light: Post-Industrial City Poems and Photography
Naomi Fast is an American poet, artist, and photographer who grew up in California, Brussels, and Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo). Ms. Fast earned her MA in Writing from Portland State University, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Shelley Reece Award. Her poetry has been published around the U.S. in various journals and anthologies includingEmpty Shoes and VoiceCatcher, a journal featuring women authors and artists of the Pacific Northwest. In addition, her poem “Kajiji Fires” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The poems and photographs in Fast’sPortland Light: Post-Industrial City Poems & Photography, provide a glimpse into the Rose City’s evolution over a ten-year period.
Fantasy by Naomi Fast
According to Naomi, “I consider my Portland Light poems to be ‘light’ in language, length, mood and tone—they are, if you will, ‘language snapshots.’ My hope is that they also reveal bits of a city that aren’t readily seen unless we shine a light on them.”
Awning of Stars by Naomi Fast
Eclipse
by Naomi Fast
We photograph the bronze moon
in increments.
Planets collaborate
enlightening our address
with sun and moon’s embrace.
We’ve lived rivers and oceans of years
but it only takes one
cloudless September night
to eclipse them all,
to reveal with a flash
this naked moment
of our sameness.
Latitude # 1, edited by Rob Gourley, photo by Chris Gourley
FEATURING Natosha Natoaster Snider, Melissa Sillitoe-Bocarde, Dan Raphael, Robert Rahula, Joshua Baker, Toni Partington (aka Lumbrazo-Luna), Christopher Luna, & more.
LATITUDE, in its first issue published this week, spotlights several emerging poets along with new texts offered by some leading poets who curate spoken word events in the Portland-Vancouver metro area.
Objective was to produce a journal focused on expressive arts, what my professor, Nicholas Crome, used to refer to as “small literary magazines” back in the early 70s. Method involved gathering material from all sorts of contacts, without offering a preconceived theme for the issue, nor excessive guidelines, because I was hoping to be able to present both topical and stylistic variety. As for selection, I fortunately was able to accept something from each contributor. Results are initially appealing, although ultimately this is in the hands of the readers.
THIS SMALL JOURNAL focused on expressive arts is available in the following independent shops:
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 