Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.
Katherine Factor by Erin Monahan
Katherine Factor is an author, poet, and editor. She is the author of a book of poems, A Sybil Society, and four Choose Your Own Adventure interactive novels, including Spies: Mata Hari, Spies: Harry Houdini, and Spies: Spy for Cleopatra. Katherine earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa and has been a writer-in-residence at schools for the arts. Her music essays can be seen on PopMatters. Her children’s book about Bigfoot is forthcoming in March 2023 from ChooseCo.
The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.
UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.
As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.
Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.
The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.
UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing.
As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery. Art At The CAVE was established in 2017. Located at 108 E. Evergreen in downtown Vancouver, the CAVE is free and open to the public Tues-Sat, 10am-4pm, and on First Fridays when it remains open until 8:00pm. The gallery is also available to host events. Visit the website at artatthecave.com or contact gallery@artatthecave.com for more information
Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to present the debut chapbook from Leah Klass. Recently relocated from Portland to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Leah is a poet, community activist, global connector, and World Peace Fellow. Hers is the first book of poetry Printed Matter Vancouver has published featuring a writer who lives outside of Southwest Washington.
The debut collection of poetry by Leah Klass tells stories of discovering empathy through human connection. Her work is a rallying call to value our everyday interactions with other people. Reach Out, Reach In offers concrete ideas for transforming the world into a warmer, more welcoming place.
Reach Out, Reach In
By Leah Klass
Published by Printed Vancouver
October 25, 2021
Cover Art & Design by Mercer Hanau
Edited by Toni Lumbrazo Luna and Christopher Luna
ASIN: B09K1HRGF6 ISBN-13: 979-8985129106
ADVANCE PRAISE FORREACH OUT, REACH IN
How we are made is how we see, and from the rich mosaic of her background Leah Klass delivers kaleidoscopic poems that will persuade your vision to see this world made strange and precious. This book offers local beginnings, global consciousness, and the courage to use language for what it needs to do: sustain the sovereign self engaged in connecting the private life to the public world. Enter this book troubled, then emerge knowing “there is another way.” — Kim Stafford, author of Singer Come from Afar
I read Reach Out, Reach In straight through and want more. Leah Klass tells to the bone truth in bold narratives and chewable language. She is a thoroughly American woman who gathered new languages and a layered identity living in many countries. “Understand I am global,” she writes, and we do, seeing through her “inherited pattern recognition” a unifying grasp of culture and language that threads through her own evolution from childhood to maturity. These brave poems move with a strong beat, riding on a wide and inclusive heart. They illuminate so much of a woman’s experience through the stages of her life. For Klass, a fierce advocacy for all people developed, rooted in connection and kindness, and in her passion for acts big and small in families and communities that count toward healing the world. — Rae Latham
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Washington, D.C., Leah’s education has included attending diverse public schools and studying abroad. She learned Spanish in the homes of her friends in Falls Church, Virginia. In high school she turned 16 on a secular kibbutz, where she worked on the assembly line in an olive factory and was chased by ostriches. She later waitressed and cleaned houses to help pay for her studies in Anthropology at the University of Virginia which included a year of study abroad in Brazil. She completed a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland thanks to a Rotary Fellowship in Argentina and Australia.
She spent the first years of her career bringing businesses from different countries together and encouraging friendships between strangers. Market research and report writing were a ticket to long weekends in Chile and high speed taxi rides in Mexico. She has also helped get social services to migrant communities, taught students how to better network and facilitated group discussions for international business people.
Leah’s greatest pleasures are making connections and reaching out to build community. Speaking many languages allows her to communicate with more people. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese and some Hebrew and German. She is committed to valuing intergenerational relationships and amplifying kindness.
After becoming a mother, Leah experienced a great shift in her understanding of the world and felt an overwhelming desire to express her need to build community and to help others find and use their voices. In tandem, she joined a kind and passionate poetry community in Portland, Oregon. With the support of the group, poetry has become a way for her to tell stories and to activate others to go out and do something good.
NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, this month’s reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on September 10 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are “Reading” or “Just Listening.” You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less.
The Loranger family, who have been loyal regulars since our very first reading in November 2004, recently lost their home in a fire. In lieu of a five-dollar suggested donation, we request that you donate to the Loranger’s GoFundMe page. Let’s come together as a community to help our friends in need: https://www.gofundme.com/f/jack-and-lori-loranger-fire-fund
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, & Morgan Paige
Featuring Brad Garber and Gina Williams
7 pm
Thursday, September 10
On Zoom
LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,
ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, has provided a home for us since 2015: https://nichewinebar.com
Note: Gina Williams and Christopher Luna will also be reading with Dan Raphael for Annie Bloom’s books on September 14:
Brad Garber has degrees in biology, chemistry and law. He writes, paints, draws, photographs, hunts for mushrooms and snakes in the Great Northwest. Since 1991, he has published poetry, magazine articles, essays and weird stuff in publications including Edge Literary Journal, Pure Slush, On the Rusk Literary Journal, Sugar Mule, Third Wednesday, Barrow Street, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Barzakh Magazine, Five:2:One, Ginosko Journal, Vine Leaves Press, Riverfeet Press, Smoky Blue Literary Magazine, and Aji Magazine. Brad was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2011, 2013 & 2018.
Gina Williams is a journalist, photographer, former firefighter, and gardener. She’s a Pacific Northwest native and can often be found rambling in the Oregon Outback, volunteering at the community garden, or on assignment in a far-flung location. She lives and creates near Portland, Oregon. Her full-length collection of poetry, An Unwavering Horizon, was published by Finishing Line Press this year. Williams is a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and founder of Plein Air Poetry Northwest, a nonprofit organization supporting literary arts and environmental activism. Learn more at GinaMarieWilliams.com.
An Unwavering Horizon is available through Finishing Line Press as well as other outlets, including Portland’s Powell’s Books.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna of Printed Matter Vancouver Eugenia Hepworth Petty with special guests Xavier Cavazos & Connor Simons
7 pm Thursday, August 8 Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7 FREE
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
Eugenia Hepworth Petty writes, shoots film, and covers things with wax and resin. In the past she had an obsession with cassette tape recorders. She prefers buses over planes. In the mid 1990s she lived in Ukraine and began using her camera more than her tape recorder, and later began making postcards, which she continues today. Most recently she co-founded and co-edits the online journal Squatters’ Press, which is dedicated to the myriad causes and consequences of the migration of sentient beings upon this earth. Eugenia’s most recent publication is the chapbook Instructions or the Apocalypse (Dancing Girl Press, 2016).
Xavier Cavazos is the author of Diamond Grove Slave Tree (2015), the inaugural Prairie Seed Poetry Prize from Ice Cube Press, and Barbarian at the Gate (2014), which was published in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets Chapbook Series. Cavazos earned an MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment from Iowa State University. His poetry appears in anthologies such as Aloud: Voices from the NuYoRican Poets Café (1994), Under the Pomegranate Tree: Best Latino Erotica (1994), Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the POEMFONE Poets (1996), and Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Cavazos’s honors include a Nuyorican Poets Café “Fresh Poet Award” (1993), Grand Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poet’s Café (1995), and a Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Fellowship (2013). He currently teaches in the Africana and Black Studies and the Professional and Creative Writing Programs at Central Washington University.
Connor L Simons is a poet and translator based in Minneapolis. He is currently a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, where he also works as the poetry editor for the Great River Review. His work has recently appeared in the Apricity Press, Indianapolis Review, Adelaide Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in the Colorado Review and La Revista Union.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna of Printed Matter Vancouver Featuring Tim Whitsel
7 pm Thursday, January 10, 2019 Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7 FREE
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
Tim Whitsel believes in the power of dogwood blossoms. He may have migrated west on a solitary bicycle at the age of nineteen. He remembers the cheekbones of the first girl he kissed. He studied with David Waggoner, James Welch and Stanley Plumly at the University of Washington. For six years he curated the Windfall Reading Series at the Eugene Public Library. His poem “Mudflat Allure” won first prize at the 2013 Northwest Poets’ Concord. We Say Ourselves appeared in 2012 from Traprock Books and Airlie Press published his full-length collection Wish Meal in 2016.
GRIMACE
A cabin on a snowy river made
lonelier by threadbare conifers.
French doors, three glass teeth
facing the direction of the storm.
Everyone is away for the day.
Cinching their ballcaps snug
for a comfort they don’t feel.
Blowing on their hands one at a
time so their placards don’t fall.
Follow the Money, Hear ME
unwilling to be fenced like cattle
or fly south like trumpeter swans.
Tim Whitsel
May 10, 2018
Follow your bliss this Summer. Take a writing workshop with Christopher Luna.
Christopher has an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, where he received training in literary community outreach from Jack Collom, and two decades of teaching experience. He served as the Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA from 2013-2017. In 2004 he founded the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic, which he co-hosts with his wife Toni Partington. Christopher and Toni co-founded Printed Matter Vancouver, which publishes local poetry and provides coaching and editing services to Northwest writers.
Darlene Zimbardi had the following comments about her experience in Christopher’s poetry and memoir writing classes: “I love taking classes with Christopher. From the moment you walk into the room, you see and feel his passion for literature. His zest transfers to his students. It doesn’t matter where you are on your writing path, he encourages and challenges you. Christopher holds a safe space for writers to share their work.”
Christopher Luna photographed by Toni Partington
Below you will find several creative writing workshops throughout the region sponsored by Multnomah Arts Center, Clark College, Niche Wine Bar, and Angst Gallery. Hope you can join us.
Contact printedmattervancouver@gmail.com or christopherjluna@gmail.com for more information.
Poetry as a means of expression, exploration, and experience is available to everyone. Write poetry in response to prompts and read a variety of published poems that you can use as inspiration. Read and respond to one another’s work in this supportive setting, paying close attention to revision.
Poetry as a means of expression, exploration, and experience is available to everyone. Write poetry in response to prompts and read a variety of published poems that you can use as inspiration. Read and respond to one another’s work in this supportive setting, paying close attention to revision.
Everyone has a story to tell. Each person’s life is filled with adventure, mystery, trouble, and triumph. Memoir is a powerful way to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all human beings. This course will empower you to begin to see yourself as a part of history, and to discover the value in documenting the story of your life.
Item #: 9412
Thursdays 7/12 – 8/23/2018
1:00PM- 3:20PM
$159
Room CCE 208
Downtown Campus
500 Broadway Street, Suite 200
Vancouver, WA 98660
Metered Parking: $ 0.50/hr
Memoir writer Susan Starkey’s army jacket covered in pins from her years on the front lines of the battle for civil rights, the anti-war movement, and the gay rights movement
Beginners and experienced writers alike will generate new works and discuss the poet’s role in the community. Read, listen to, and write poetry together in a supportive class focused on providing gentle, constructive feedback. Discuss how to construct a manuscript and ready it for publication. Writers of all experience levels are welcome. Bring paper and pen or laptop. Ages 16 and over.
Join us on Saturday, June 9 for The Work, a monthly poetry writing workshop at Niche Wine Bar led by former Clark County Poet Laureate (2013-2017) Christopher Luna.
Christopher is completely convinced of poetry’s ability to encourage empathy and compassion, and to spark the shifts in consciousness which can lead to healing, personal growth, and an interest in fighting for progressive social change. He would love to share his passion for poetry with you.
We will read and discuss poetry, and write several new poems together from 11:30 until 2:30.
Niche is located at 1013 Main Street, right next door to The Kiggins Theatre, Vancouver’s landmark movie house in the Vancouver Arts District.
$20 suggested donation; no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Bring a poem to share as a way of saying hello.
Shareable snacks are also welcome and very much appreciated.
Note: The Work Saturday Afternoon Edition will take place on the second Saturday of each month, unless otherwise noted. Upcoming Saturday workshops will take place on July 14 and August 11.
Join us on Monday, May 28 for The Work, a monthly poetry writing workshop at Angst Gallery led by former Clark County Poet Laureate (2013-2017) Christopher Luna.
We will read and discuss poetry, and write several new poems together from 6:00 until 8:30.
Angst Gallery is located at 1015 Main Street, two doors down from The Kiggins Theatre, Vancouver’s landmark movie house in the Vancouver Arts District.
$20 suggested donation; no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Bring a poem to share as a way of saying hello.
Shareable snacks are also welcome and very much appreciated.
Note: The Monday evening edition of the Work will take place at Angst Gallery on the last Monday evening of each month, unless otherwise noted. Upcoming Monday workshops will take place on the following dates: June 25 and July 30.
Drawing from a deep well of autobiographical and cross-cultural experience, Everywhere I Find Myself is a wide-ranging narrative journey of the heart.
“Leah Stenson’s Everywhere I Find Myself traverses the full range of human experience–what she calls the ‘terrible exquisiteness of being’–from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima to a friendly encounter with a cow; from the distractions of our devices to moments of deep tranquility; from a grandfather’s suicide to a daughter’s gift of a pair of pillowcases made from fine Egyptian cotton. By turns witty, playful, and deadly serious, these poems give readers one woman’s unflinchingly honest take on life’s beautiful, painful vicissitudes.”—John Brehm, author of Help Is on the Way and Sea of Faith
“In this engaging and satisfying first full-length collection of poems, Leah Stenson explores the tensions between mystery and understanding, and between estrangement and belonging. The world of these poems–our world–is simultaneously expansive and confining, and Stenson travels through it seeking connection. ‘Home / wasn’t far away,’ she tells us, ‘but the road never ended’.”—Andrea Hollander, author of Landscape with Female Figure, Woman in the Painting, The Other Life, and House Without a Dreamer
“’Eternity can be heard in the stir of the breeze, in the vineyards, the whisper of prayer,’ the poet writes in Everywhere I Find Myself. The poems explore love, memory and deep loss with equal verve. With an artist’s sharp eye for detail and a philosophical world view Leah Stenson is a savvy traveler. Her wry wit, compassionate heart and spirit infuse this vivid, engaging collection.”—Marilyn Stablein, author of Climate of Extremes, Splitting Hard Ground, and Sleeping in Caves
Flying to Ohio
by Leah Stenson
After a soporific of red wine and potato chips,
I drifted off over the Great Plains at midnight,
the cabin darkened, my heart and the heartland lit.
Now the sky is reddening in the east, and
in the west lights are clumped like islands
glimmering through velum.
On that solo adventure four decades ago, knapsack
on my back, I wandered from the foot of the Acropolis
to Delphi and Santorini, channeling light.
Returning home a prodigal wanderer, I never stopped.
Sometimes at high altitudes, I still find shards
of former selves, a polished stone, a sun-bleached shell.
LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
christopherjluna@gmail.com
Peter Ludwin is the recipient of a Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust and the W.D. Snodgrass Award for Endeavor and Excellence in Poetry. His first book, A Guest in All Your Houses, was published in 2009 by Word Walker Press. His second collection is Rumors of Fallible Gods, a two-time finalist for the Gival Press Poetry Award that was published in 2013 by Presa Press.
His new book, Gone to Gold Mountain, was published in 2016 by MoonPath Press and subsequently nominated for a Washington State Book Award. In May, 2017 the Before Columbus Foundation nominated it for an American Book Award.
A fourteen-year participant in Mexico’s San Miguel Poetry Week, where he has studied under such noted poets as Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland, Joseph Stroud and Robert Wrigley, Ludwin was the Second Prize winner of the 2007-2008 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards. In 2010 Soundings Review named him its Reader’s Choice winner in the spring/summer issue.
Most recently, he was the 2016 First Prize winner of The Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, the Second Place winner of the 2016 Paulann Petersen Poetry Award, and a finalist in poetry for both the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards and the Pangaea Poetry Prize. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, he received nominations in 2016 from MoonPath Press and Connecticut River Review.
His work has appeared in many journals, including Atlanta Review, The Bitter Oleander, The Comstock Review, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod, North American Review and Prairie Schooner, to name a few. A world traveler who has journeyed by canoe to visit remote Indian families in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador, hiked in the Peruvian Andes, thumbed for rides in Greece, bargained for goods in the markets of Marrakech and Istanbul and survived debilitating illness in China and Tibet, he is also accomplished on acoustic guitar and autoharp. He lives in Kent, Washington, where he works for the Parks Department.
Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Neil Aitken Hosted by Christopher Luna and Toni Partington of Printed Matter Vancouver 7 pm Thursday, January 11 Open mic sign up begins at 6:30 and closes at 7 Angst Gallery 1015 Main Street Vancouver, WA 98660
Neil Aitken, author of Babbage’s Dream
Neil Aitken is the author of Babbage’s Dream (Sundress 2017) and The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga 2008), which received the Philip Levine Prize, as well as the poetry chapbook, Leviathan. His work has been published in American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Dialogist, Ninth Letter, The Normal School, The Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals. A former computer programmer and a past Kundiman Poetry Fellow, he is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review, curator of Have Book Will Travel, and co-director of De-Canon: A Visibility Project. He also hosts The Lit Fantastic, a podcast about writers and their obsessions, and works as a creative writing coach and mentor. Visit him online at www.neil-aitken.com
Float
—a fundamental type used to define numbers with fractional parts
Like a bell, or rather the sound of it opening,
a silence that having tolled speaks again
suspended between states of incompleteness—
a point traversing a numbered landscape.
This country of small infinities is what we do
with what remains: bits of window panes,
refracted light, what gathers in the torn leaves
from the dimming edge of the red fields
grown dark. Say what you will, the body is no more
than the moon, a white trouser button in a pool
of gasoline, a halo of ash and flame
ascending the ladder of night.
Food and libation provided by Niche Wine Bar, 1013 Main Street
Sound provided by Briz Loan & Guitar
LGBTQIA+ FRIENDLY, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004
Listen to a feature on Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic on OPB Radio’s State of Wonder
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 